Gay Marriage Debated

Good evening. My name is Jason Wallace. I am pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church. It's a pleasure to have you here with us this evening.

The question that we have before us this evening is whether gay marriage is supported from scripture.

We have with us Pastor Dee Bradshaw of Sacred Light of Christ Metropolitan Community Church here in Salt Lake City.

We also have with us Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is Dr. White's 10th debate that he has done for us on various subjects, most dealing with LDS theology, but three of them dealing with Roman Catholic theology as well.

We have been very privileged to have him. He is the author of numerous books and is an elder in the

Reformed Baptist Church. As I said, the question before us this evening is over gay marriage, and we will begin with Pastor Bradshaw.

As I prepared for tonight, one of the first things that always comes to people's mind when they even think about same -sex marriages is whether being homosexual is acceptable or not anyway, because if you don't believe it is, it's kind of a mute point, because if it's not acceptable, then it doesn't matter what anybody thinks anyhow.

So the first thing I would have to say is that for me, of course it is, because I am a gay man, a homosexual,

I came out in 1978, and the scriptures were for me, as for most people, the biggest stumbling block that I had to deal with.

Growing up in the church, you have this relationship with God, you have a relationship with church, with your family, and then you start realizing that those feelings that you've had all your life, those strange feelings where you're attracted to the guys and not the girls, and it's uncomfortable because you're going on dates and you can't go because you don't really want to go, start entering into your life, and so then you have to start looking at your life and saying, okay,

Lord, what's going on here? What's taking place in my life that's so different from everybody else, and why is this happening to me?

And obviously, being in the church, you start looking at the scriptures, and you look, obviously, at the typical scriptures that everybody looks at, what we affectionately call the clobber passages, and those are

Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 and 20, and Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1

Timothy, and you look at those, and I can tell you from my own experience that as you read those, as you're a faithful believer in Christ and a follower of Christ, and you walk with God, you start questioning yourself, obviously.

And as you do that, you have to go to the Lord in prayer, and you have to talk to God a lot about it because it's a problem.

And the problem is that as you look at those scriptures, if you're gay, you look at those scriptures, and you look at them, and you say,

Lord, is this me? Is this a picture of me? And you realize that it's not because you read the story in Genesis about Sodom and Gomorrah, and people put that as a classic homosexual destruction scene.

And if you look at Sodom and Gomorrah, and you can think, well, yeah, okay, they were going there, and they were wanting to rape these guys.

I'm not really inclined to rape people, so does that really apply to me? Heterosexual or homosexual rape is not acceptable, and so does this really apply to me?

And so then I go on to Leviticus, and Leviticus was probably the hardest because it says, man shall not lie with man as you lie with a woman.

And I thought, okay, well, I haven't done either of those, so it doesn't really apply either. But the feelings are there, the desire's there to date a male and not the girls, and that's where my interest lies, so that was a problem.

So then you go on to Romans, and again, you find these passages that talk about behavior and certain things that are taking place, and you start looking at those, and again, you have to ask yourself,

Lord, is this me? And that's basically the approach I had to take in looking at my sexuality was looking at the scriptures that people use to say that I can't be who

I am and be a Christian, and I had to go to the Lord and say, Lord, is this me?

And the answer was no, it's not. And I played the game for 32 years.

I was a good little churchgoer, did everything I was supposed to, and at 32 years old,

I couldn't take it anymore, and finally, I had to admit that I was gay. And again,

I took it to the Lord in prayer, and very distinctly, just like the time when the Lord let me know that he existed and was a vital part of my life, that spirit came to me and told me

I was fine. But I was the same person I'd always been, except that now

I knew who I was, and there was a peace, and there was a calm, and there was a gentleness that I hadn't experienced in a long time since I first went to the

Lord to find out if God really existed in my life. And it was that same peace and that same calm of the spirit, but those scriptures still sat there.

And they sat there for many years because the church didn't want me anymore because I didn't fit into the mold, and so it was difficult to look at those passages.

And so then I started looking at them to find myself there.

And one of the things I always hear nowadays is, well, you're going at it with a set agenda. You're going at it with a perspective of homosexuality is okay.

Of course I am, because I am homosexual. I can't go at it from any other viewpoint.

And I found it interesting that people automatically assume, because of what's described in there, that homosexuality is wrong when actually what

I always find in there is certain behaviors that are wrong, like in Genesis.

Like I said before, gang rape is never acceptable, and that's what you're talking about. If you go to Ezekiel and you read about the sins of Sodom, it talks about all their being unkind to the poor, they're being wealthy, they're being lazy, abusive to the poor, not taking care of people, and down the list.

And then it gets to the part where it says they performed abominations before the Lord. Well, some people associate abomination with homosexuality, but in doing the research that I've done,

I found that the word that's used there, that abomination, primarily is used when associated with idolatry and things associated with acts of idolatry.

And then I looked into Canaan itself, the land where they went. And in Exodus 34, the

Lord told the people of Israel that they were to drive out the people of Canaan when they went in there.

They were not to make any covenants with them. They were not to marry with the people there, because if they did, their sons would be dragged into prostitution.

And the prostitution they're talking about isn't just making money, it's temple prostitution, because that was the land of idolatry, the lowest form of idolatry you could find where sex was just rampant.

Last night, there was a debate here about temples, well, they would go to the temple, but it wasn't the same.

It was a free -for -all sex -wise in those fertility cults. And people had sex with everybody and anything.

And one of the prime people at those fertility cults was the temple priest who represented the god or goddess of that particular cult.

And to touch that person was a blessing. If you were privileged enough to have sex with them, it was almost like being guaranteed immortality.

And they seriously believed that their sexual activity excited the gods, so that those gods got excited and would achieve orgasm, and the land would be made fertile because of the activity.

And so it was very wild. And Canaan was the wildest of the areas. And God said, run those people all out, or you will be troubled with this all your life.

It didn't happen. They didn't run them out. They made covenants with one by that trickery. And if you read through the scriptures, they were troubled with idolatry all the time until they were carried off captive into Babylon.

They were in idolatry. And there were male prostitutes all over the place. So then,

OK, that's not me. So then we get to Leviticus. And again,

I looked at it, and it tied right in there at the beginning of chapter 18. It says, you are not to do the things that the people of this land do, nor are you to do the things that the people of the land of Egypt where you came out of do.

Well, both of these people, lands, were idolatrous. And one of the books I read said that what

God was doing in giving him all these commandments was gradually weaning them from the milk of idolatry.

They had been fed all through their time in Egypt. If you look at the account where Moses went up on the mount, he'd been gone for a while.

And they got together. They put their jewelry together. And they made a god. And it says, they ate, and they drank, and they went out to party.

And some of the context I read said, basically, they held an orgy, because that was a part of the fertility cults.

So it was a part of their culture. And God was weaning them from that. So if you read through Leviticus, it's a lot of don't do this, and don't sleep with this, and don't do this.

It tied in with a lot of the fertility cults and the idol worship that was a part of their life at the time.

And so even when it gets to that part where it says, man shall not lie with man as with a woman, it's an abomination. There's the abomination word again that ties in with idolatry.

We get to Romans. Well, Rome was also another country, city, that was full of idolatry, that was full of prostitution.

It was very immoral. I mean, they had holidays for the prostitutes.

And so it was a very immoral city. So when Paul wrote to the people in Rome, he was not writing to your local church out there that in the

West Valley, telling them about the culture around them. Because if you look around the city of Salt Lake today, you do not find prostitutes.

Well, excuse me, you do. But you do not find temples of prostitution. You do not find cult temples.

You do not find any of those things that were so prevalent in Rome. I mean, it was bad enough that one of the historians wrote of Caesar that he was every woman's husband and every man's wife.

And so the morality of Rome was terrible. The same thing with Corinth, when they wrote to Corinth.

The city of Corinth was not a good town. It was not a quiet little suburb. It was a port city.

It was also infested. It just overran with this idolatry and so on.

And so what they were talking about, if you read Romans, it starts out by saying that these people knew

God, but yet they turned their back on God. And they walked away from God, and they took after other gods.

And therefore, God gave them over to the lusts of their heart. And again, I find idolatry there, where they're tied in with this worship attitude.

And they're doing all kinds of things. And it even talks about how women left their natural use of women.

And men left their natural use of men for women and went after men.

Well, in the temples, that could happen. But it talks about lust, that they had a lust for the other person.

Well, lust is not a word that's a nice word. When you lust after someone, you have no concern about that person's well -being, that person's ideas, their thoughts.

When you're lusting after somebody, it's about sex, and that's it. And so I looked at myself again, and I said,

OK, am I lusting after these men? No, I'm not, not to the jeopardy of their well -being.

And one of the problems that often we run into is when people think of homosexuals, they think of the sex -ules.

And too often, when people think of homosexuals, they think of perverts, weirdos, pedophiles, all those kinds of things.

Do they exist in our community? Of course they do. Do they exist in the heterosexual community? Of course they do.

If you look at statistics on pedophiles, 98 % are heterosexual. Our church works with people who are coming out of those programs, who are in the halfway houses.

We work with people coming out of those programs and coming out of the prison systems, who were pedophiles.

Because what they found is that most of those people did not deal with their sexuality, and so they acted out.

And sadly, children seem to be easy victims and presumed to be safe victims.

And that's too bad. But once these people get out of the system and they find out who they are, most of them never go back again, because it's not their orientation.

So I had to look at those things and say, is this me? And it's not. Did I want to give up God? No, I did not.

And I did not give up God. Did I want to give up the peace and the spirit of the Holy Spirit?

No, and I didn't. And I can tell you that God has led me so many places, so many wonderful places, experiences.

Sometimes places I didn't want to go. When you're working on your house and the back wall's torn out and the

Holy Spirit says to you, go to California. And you don't want to go, but you have to go.

And you know your dad's dying and probably will die that week and you need to go. And finally, you give up and you go, because your friend is terribly depressed.

Your heterosexual friend, by the way, is terribly depressed. And you spend three days with her. You get her through it.

You come home and the night you get home, your father dies. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

So listen to that spirit. So we look at the scriptures and we can say, yeah, we can point out a ton of scriptures that people can point out.

Yeah, this says this and this says that. You know, I could have gone up here and done the other argument tonight because I know them well enough.

But the point wasn't, was that what the scripture says. Yes, the scripture talks about that activity.

But I had to look at myself and say, is it talking about me? Do I hate my parents?

Do I do all those nasty things at the end of Romans that it says? No, I don't.

Have I denied God? No, I don't. People will say I'm chasing after the idolatry of my sexuality.

My sexuality is not an idol. Again, it's not about the sex.

My partner and I have been together for five years. We met at church. We dated for months.

We lived together for almost a year. In fact, we bought a house together and we'd never had sex.

It wasn't about the sex. It was about our relationship with each other. We still have separate bedrooms and bathrooms.

It's about a relationship. It's about our love, our compassion. Could I do that with a woman?

No, I could not. I was engaged twice. I tried. And I have hundreds of friends who got married because they said it would go away if you did.

It didn't. And they had children and they have ex -wives. I have a friend that was an evangelical pastor.

Preached all over the world. He was told that if he preached against it, it would go away. So he preached vehemently against it for 38 years.

Never went away. Never has gone away.

Has he been miserable? Yes, because he's living a lie. He's preaching a lie. He's not walking in that spirit.

So do the scriptures support homosexual marriages? Not in so many words.

I mean, Hebrew tells us that marriage is for everyone. And it doesn't say a man and a woman. It says that marriage is for everyone.

To prevent fornication. And that it's good for everyone. Well, I could take that.

But then you'll say, I have an agenda. I do. Who doesn't?

Luther had an agenda. Calvin had an agenda. We have so many churches because people had an agenda. The Southern Baptist Church was born because the people there wanted to keep their slaves.

So a lot of times go on with agendas. We look at things through the eyes we see.

Why do we look at them? Because we're trying to find ourselves there. You look at the scriptures trying to find yourself.

And you do. And that's good. Some people try to use

Jonathan and David as an example of homosexual relations. Can't prove it.

But I can tell you that when I read about their love, it rings a bell. It rings home because they're exactly the same feelings

I've had for my partner. How many heterosexual men that have met someone, that they fall in love with them immediately, the first time they meet them, take them home, pledge their love to them, make a covenant of love to them, make a commitment to them, take off their valuable possessions that represent their position of royalty, and give them to that loved one.

That'd be about like you meeting a man, going home, making a covenant of love, giving him your car, your house, and all your jewelry on your first meeting.

Yeah, I can relate to that as a deep love. Heterosexuals can't.

Because heterosexuals don't know what it's like to be gay. They think that we are heterosexuals who have just chosen to go a different way.

I can tell you it's not true. I've had no desire for women. In fact, the thought kind of makes me sick.

No offense to you women. I work in the medical field. I've been in the medical field for 30 years.

I help deliver high -risk babies. I know what it's all about. Not interested.

Not because I chose not to be. I tried to be. It wouldn't work.

And so rather than drag somebody else into the lie, I decided I could not do that. And I took it to the Lord. And again, the

Spirit let me know that I'm fine. And only I know what my walk with the

Lord is. And only you know what your walk with the Lord is. Nobody else can tell you.

Thank you. We'll now have a 20 -minute opening statement by Dr.

White. I have stood in many a situation to defend the sufficiency of the

Word of God as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church. God has not left us up to our own devices.

He has given the church His Word. He has preserved that Word. He has made that Word perspicuous, clear, interpretable.

And if we will honor that Word, then we can know what His truth is for His people.

I have defended that in many a situation, even last evening in the debate that was held in this place.

That was part and parcel of the real issue. If we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, then it tells us what the church is to be about and what about temples and worship and the sacrifice of Christ and things like that.

When it comes to the issue that now faces our society regarding homosexual marriage, the

Bible does very clearly express to us what marriage is. For example, if you'll turn with me in your

Scriptures to Matthew chapter 19, the Lord Jesus Himself addressed this particular subject.

And it came up many times in His ministry because the fact that the Jews had adopted a very lax view of marriage and had given to men the right to dismiss their wives for almost any purpose whatsoever.

And in Matthew chapter 19, beginning of verse 3, some Pharisees came to Jesus testing Him and asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

Now Jesus' answer takes us back to the very beginning of God's revelation because He says,

He answered and said, have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

So here you have the incarnate Son of God, the very one that we believe spoke and the worlds came into existence, telling us what marriage is all about.

And He goes back to a passage of Scripture that many in liberal theological circles today do not even believe was in fact penned by God or is just merely a human reflection upon these issues.

He goes back to the Pentateuch. He goes back to Genesis chapter 2 and notice His interpretation.

He says, have you not read that He who created them, God is our creator.

God defines the parameters of male and female and what the family is.

That is God's right as the creator. We as the creation do not have the right to change the parameters that He Himself lays down.

Jesus says that God is the creator and He created them from the beginning. This was not just a cultural thing.

This was not just something that was relevant to the period of time of Moses's existence or Leviticus 18, but from the beginning as a part of His creative decree,

He created them male and female and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother.

Now here you have the family. You have the family made up of a father, a mother, and offspring.

Here is from the beginning God's intention in the family laid out for us.

A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

Here is the Lord Jesus's own interpretation of the family unit and the continuation of that family unit.

So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

I suggest to you that these words make no sense outside of that which the church has always believed and that is marriage is between a man and a woman.

In fact, the very term homosexual marriage would not even be a meaningful phrase from a biblical perspective.

When we look at Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4, which is alluded to earlier, where you have there that marriage is to be held in honor by all, the only way to understand that in the context of Hebrews, especially given its reliance upon the

Old Covenant and the Old Testament scriptures, is that the marriage bed is referring to that which is seen here in Matthew 19, seen in Genesis chapter 2, male and female, a man and a woman together in that marriage relationship.

When we go back to Genesis chapter 2, we are also faced with another very important aspect of this and that is the presentation of the words the

Lord Jesus quoted is in the context of the fact that there is no helper found that corresponded to the man.

And this is one of the most important things I think we need to focus upon this evening and that is the scriptures use marriage as an illustration of the relationship between the

Lord Jesus and the church. In the book of Ephesians, Paul draws this marriage relationship out and identifies

Christ as the husband and the church as the bride. And there is a complementary relationship that exists between Christ, the

Savior of the body, and his body, the bride of Christ. And that complementary relationship is seen in the male -female relationship.

In Genesis chapter 2, we are told that it was not good that the man was to be alone and that the man could not find in the created order one that was complementary to him, one that met his needs.

And so we have the creation of woman. And when woman is brought to man, man sees that he is flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, that he meets that which he himself lacks.

You see, in the creative decree of God, God has made the male -female relationship such that the female completes the male and the male completes the female.

But there is a complementary relationship. There is no complementarianism in a homosexual relationship.

It is a situation where you have a mirror image. You do not have the creative decree of God being fulfilled in that situation.

And that's why you do not have, even though Paul writes in a situation where homosexuality was well known,

Plato had already written about almost every aspect of homosexual behavior, homosexual relationships.

Paul was well aware of these things. He had read the Greek philosophers. He was a man of the world.

He understood these things. Many times he is presented as if he just, he didn't address these things because he didn't know about them.

No, that is not the case whatsoever. He knows about all these things and yet we have no reference whatsoever in the

New Testament to this kind of radical redefinition of the nature of marriage and male -female relationships that would be required if, in point of fact,

Christians were going to support this concept of same -sex homosexual marriages.

Now, obviously I've spent significantly more time already on the issue of marriage than we did in the opening presentation.

I wanted to address that first because the fact that I think it's important that we recognize that there is a positive biblical presentation given to us as to what marriage is and how it functions.

There in Genesis 2 you have male and female, father, mother, offspring. These are all elements of what

God intended marriage to be about and that's how he created us. But, of course, the presentation that I am responding to this evening has primarily focused upon, well, but is it really wrong to be homosexual in the first place?

And this evening we can hardly exhaust the amount of information that needs to be discussed.

Obviously, that is something that comes up in this particular issue. In this particular debate, the first and foundational issue for someone who claims the

Bible is the Word of God is to determine whether, in point of fact, the Bible addresses this issue. We have been told that no, the

Bible doesn't address the issue of specifically a monogamous homosexual relationship that is based upon love and the assertion that God made me this way, this is the way he created me, and therefore all those passages that address the issue of homosexuality are not speaking about me.

Allow me in just a few moments that I have to make some comments on the passages because most of the relevant passages were indeed referenced.

That is Genesis chapters 18 and 19 in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah, Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 in regards to the

Holiness Code that is contained there, Romans chapter 1, the Apostle Paul's description, and then the use of the

Greek term arsenikoites in 1 Corinthians 6 -9 and 1 Timothy 1 -10. Now, in essence, what

I would like to try to explain to you is the consistency of the biblical revelation at this point.

There is no reason whatsoever in looking at the biblical text and accepting it as a consistent revelation from God to believe that there is any difference in the presentation from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation.

Indeed, the situation in Genesis really goes beyond the concept of gang rape.

In point of fact, that only becomes an issue after Lot has identified the desire of the men, notice it's the men of Sodom, the desire of the men of Sodom in Genesis 18 as wicked.

And notice that that's the very same term that God Himself used in Genesis 13 when

He said that He needed to find out, that He needed to test the men of Sodom to see if the wickedness, the men of wickedness, that was truly the case.

And when He says He's going to send the angels down, back in Genesis 13 there is this cryptic statement that the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked.

Now, this is before anything about gang rapes or anything else. It is about the everyday activity that went on in Sodom.

This is clearly seen in Genesis 18 because when Lot encounters the angels, the visitors, he doesn't know that they're angels at this point in time, when he encounters them he wants to get them out of the city square as fast as he can.

He knows what the city is like. The issue of gang rape has not even come up. And that whole situation does not even arise until after the men have surrounded the house and demanded these men be brought out so that they might know them.

Only then does Lot identify this as wickedness. And so the issue of what is an abomination, which was brought up in the opening presentation, in reality does come out in Leviticus 18 and 20, where there we are told that this activity is toevah.

Toevah is a Hebrew term that, it was quite rightly said, is frequently attached to idolatry.

In fact, in the book of Isaiah, those who choose to worship idols are said to be themselves toevah.

That is a person who chooses to go against God's law, whether it be in idolatry or in sexual behavior, is toevah, in God's sight, is an abomination and the law brings penalty to bear for those activities.

And so in Leviticus 18 and 20, these things are brought out. Now many people seem to dismiss the relevance of Leviticus because, well, that's just the old law, but please notice something.

This is the section of the Old Testament that the Lord Jesus quoted from more than any other. This is the section that says, you shall love the

Lord your God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And it is the only place in the Bible where we have prohibition against bestiality and incest.

And so obviously these prohibitions were not merely cultural at the time. Jesus did not interpret them in that way.

He did not interpret the law in that way either. And neither did the Apostle Paul. For in Romans chapter 1, as you well know, when he addresses this issue, mentioning first lesbianism and then male homosexuality, he does not do it in the context of saying, well, if you don't love

God and if you turn your back on God, then these are bad things to do. Folks, think with me for just a moment when we look at Romans chapter 1.

Yes, there are many sins that are listed at the end of Romans chapter 1. It's been said, well, this isn't descriptive of me.

I haven't hated my parents. I haven't done all the stealing and the lying and all these things.

And therefore, this is not descriptive of me. Please recognize something. Could we honestly say, as we look at the descriptions of the sins, the idolatry, for example, could an idolater look at Romans chapter 1 and say, well, look,

I don't hate my parents. I love God. I just happen to love other gods as well.

Therefore, this passage is not applicable to me. Well, of course not. That is atomizing the text and not allowing the text to stand as a whole.

The fact of the matter is, Paul utilizes in Romans chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, this concept and he's illustrating what idolatry does.

It twists the creator -creation distinction. Man twists the relationship that is to exist with God.

God is the one that defines what human sexuality is to be about. Man, God is the one who defines who we are to be.

God is the one who defines what worship is to be, how we're to be related to everyone around us. And we choose to twist that because we are suppressing the knowledge of God.

We do not have to do everything in the list of vices at the end of Romans chapter 1 for these things to be descriptive of us.

Because there's murder and there's lying and there's fornication and adultery. You don't have to be guilty of every single thing for this to be descriptive of each of us as an individual.

And so, Paul does specifically refer to male and female adult homosexual relationships in Romans chapter 1, verses 26 through 27.

And he does as well in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9 and 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 10.

Here, however, he uses a specific Greek term, arsenokoites. And it seems if we look historically at the situation that Paul actually possibly coined this very term.

Why do we say that? Well, because we don't see any specific reference to it prior to Paul's use in the history of literature.

And where might he have gotten it? Well, Paul would very frequently use the Greek septuagint. The Greek septuagint is the

Greek translation of the Old Testament. And he would preach from that septuagint. And so, what the Apostle Paul would frequently do is he would take terms that were found there in the septuagint and he would combine them, knowing that his audience would be drawing from the same source, so that they could see the application he was making from the text of Scripture.

And both of the terms that are put together, arsenokoites means men together in sexual relationship with one another, and both of those terms are found separately in the

Greek septuagint in Leviticus 18 and 20, the very section of the Holiness Code that says you shall not lie with a man as you lie with a woman.

And so, in both of those places, and 1 Corinthians written to the church at Corinth that Paul himself, he was involved in the planting of that church, he had preached in that church, he knows they have the

Scriptures, and then writing what, 1 Timothy 1 .10, writing to Timothy that he also knows would have the same background, same context, he uses this term that is descriptive of homosexual orientation and activity.

Now, in so doing, he says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, let me mention something before my time expires. That's a long list.

And I would imagine, if everyone in this room is honest, that somewhere along that line, that passage nailed everybody in here.

You see, there's terms there, thieves, how about covetous?

The entire advertising industry in our land exists to make you one of them. To make you covetous, to make you want what somebody else has, and you won't be happy unless you have it.

Drunkards, goodness, we all have to wonder about how we're getting home tonight simply because of that, right?

Revilers, swindlers. You see, in none of these situations could someone say who was covetous, yeah,

Paul says coveters, but I don't hate my parents, that's not me.

No. He's speaking directly to the heart of each person who's experienced this sin.

And folks, I hope in the discussion this evening, we don't miss the first part of verse 11, because for me, it is the most important aspect of this discussion tonight.

Such were some of you. Were. Not such are some of you.

Such were some of you. Why is that so important? Two things. Why do I feel this is such an important topic?

Why did I write a book with my brother Jeff Neal a few years ago on this very issue for Bethany House Publishers?

Because I just like to get involved in debates and arguments? No. Two things. A, out of my love for God, fidelity to his truth, fidelity to his word,

I must say that God's law is clear on this issue. It's clear on the subject of homosexuality, and I will not betray my faith to God by closing my eyes and saying, well,

I'm just going to go with my emotions, I'm going to go with my feelings, and I'm not going to listen to what God's word says.

God's word says homosexuality and covetousness and idolatry are sins, and I will not compromise that.

But you see, the reason I will not compromise that is it doesn't show love for God, and it does not show love for anyone else.

Because you see, Paul says, such were some of you. But you see, there is something that continues that verse.

It says, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God. There is a proclamation, there is a message of hope for every one of those in that list.

And when it says such were some of you, that means our present tense can't be for those who want to hold to those promises, but God is the one who in his love makes those promises available for those who will believe him.

Thank you very much. We'll now have a 10 -minute rebuttal from Pastor Bradshaw.

I didn't address... Oh, I'm hard of hearing, so I didn't hear it, so yeah.

I didn't address the malachoite and arsenic or choice earlier because it's one of those terms, again, that I run into quite a bit.

And if we look at St. Jerome, when he translated the Greek into the Latin, he translated arsenic, the malachoite, which is the effeminate, he translated that into a transvestite prostitute, the

Latin version of that. So again, it ties back into the prostitution. And the arsenic or choice, he tied into the person who uses or abuses those prostitutes.

And so again, it ties back into a homosexual act that's not inconsistent with a loving relationship.

And so in that light, like I said, everything I've looked at in relationship to all those things, in Romans, it talks about how people had a love for God.

They turned their back, they resorted to idolatry, and they got involved in those things associated with idolatry, of which homosexual behavior was a great deal, a great big part of that.

When Paul writes and says that some of you were, some of those people belonged to those cults, some of those people were part of the idolatry group.

They had given up idolatry for Christ. They had found that freedom. People who lived under idolatry and those systems, they had many gods, not just one.

And those gods were not friendly. So when Paul talked to them about the Savior and about God's love for them, it was a great relief for them because there was one

God who cared about them, who loved them. So when Paul's talking to those people, he's not talking to the average person walking down the street, but in what he's talking to about the people in Corinth, again, it was a very idolatrous town.

The Malachites are called effeminates. Well, the word means soft. It means soft.

It's used other places in the Bible. In Matthew, in referring to John the Baptist, Jesus said, what did you find?

Go out to somebody and find clothing? Those people that were considered soft are those people that were alluring.

That's how they got the transvestite part in there. The people would dress up in fine clothing to allure their customers and make them, make it more acceptable.

And arsenikotois is about male sex. And DeJune in the sixth century wrote, was an author in the sixth century, writing about men and their relationship with the women.

And he uses the term arsenikotois, that these men were playing the arsenikotois for their wives.

They were playing the part of the prostitute. They were charging them, basically. And so you can look at that again, and you can find many, many interpretations of those words because they are, just like he said, kind of, like I said, kind of vague.

And they say they're very crystal clear. Well, they're not all that clear. There are, in going, looking through the stuff tonight, there are many references through the

International Bible interpretations through Henry and a bunch of people that I looked at, and I stayed away from homosexual authors just because.

And all of them came up with the same thing with arsenikotois, that it has to do with male sex.

But again, it's this sexual act in relationship to either prostitution or violence or something like that.

It's not a monogamous loving relationship. And you don't find that because it didn't basically exist under those conditions.

Even the Greeks, as rampant as they were, if two people tried to be in a relationship with each other, they made fun of them because sex was so acceptable and just being a free wheeling spirit was expected.

And so the Holy Spirit moved in a lot of people and brought them to the Lord. So a lot of people, yes, they were that way.

They were the drunkards. They were the people that got involved in those kind of things. I can tell you that I don't,

I know people who have tried to not be homosexual through prayer, through everything in the world they can think of.

They tried reparative therapy, shock therapy, all kinds of things to not be homosexual, and it has not changed them.

I know many who got married and then they lived in the heterosexual lifestyle. But if you talk to them, they're still homosexual at heart because it's not about the sex.

And they are, people were with their wives 25 years and their orientation did not change, and they were devout

Christians in that whole time. Their orientation did not change. Their desires did not change.

They masked them. And people who have come out of the closet as homosexuals, in their spirituality, their lives have improved.

Their spirituality has improved. I see the people in my church who walk in there very angry and mad at God, and we teach them to trust the

Lord, to walk with the Lord, to pray, to have faith, to look at their lives from a spiritual aspect, from a spiritual point.

And their lives change and they start trusting God again, and they develop that relationship again with the

Lord, where they trust the Lord, and they walk with the Lord in faith.

And it's a wonderful thing to watch. So, am I wrong?

People will say I am. That's okay. I'm used to that. And scriptures, like I said, all the scriptures we've talked about,

I've looked at and I've looked at and looked at, and I find all the time it keeps coming back to those things that these were sexual acts that were talked about in association with idolatry, prostitution, something along that line.

They were not loving, compassionate acts. They were those things involved with idolatry.

And yes, idolatry is a choice. It is a choice. But the sexuality that I have inside me for my companion is not, he's not my idol.

He's not my idol. I went 10 years of celibacy and it didn't go away. And I walked with the

Lord. So some of them were in those categories. Maybe they were bisexual.

Hard to tell. But as far as the, like I say, the arsenicotoids and the malachoi, it's people who were soft.

And there's another term that's ARREN, ARREN is sarcotoids, which from what

I understand from the people that I know that read Greek is a term that is usually referred to when it's talking about homosexuality in the aspect of that relationship, not arsenicotoids.

Thank you. We'll now have 10 minutes of rebuttal from Dr.

White. So, as we look at the issue of the meaning of the text itself, it has been my experience in studying the materials presented by pro -homosexual authors, whether that be

Boswell, Skanzonian, Molenkot, Scroggs, whoever it might be.

There is frequently the assertion made that in reality we can't know with much level of certainty exactly what these terms mean.

When I debated Barry Lynn on this subject in New York a few years ago, that was a standard argument and that is, well, we really don't know what arsenokoites means because there is all these different scholarly sources and if they disagree with one another, then there must be a certain level of confusion.

And yet, I have never heard anyone yet, and I'm still looking, to find someone who would be able to give a response to the following argument.

The Apostle Paul quotes from the Greek Septuagint in his writings, firmly established fact.

The Apostle Paul, that's number one. Number two, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 .9 and 1 Timothy 1 .10,

where he uses the term arsenokoites, is writing to individuals who likewise had the

Greek Septuagint and likewise utilized it as the scriptures. There's no really way to argue against that.

Thirdly, that the terms arsenos and koiteo appear in the

Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality in the Greek text of the Septuagint. Again, that is a fact.

Therefore, the fact that Paul utilizes this terminology without any preceding history from which to be drawing from indicates that he's doing as he does with other words.

He's utilizing the Greek Septuagint vocabulary for his teaching and would have taught that both in word as he preached to the

Corinthians and as he taught Timothy in their role as mentor, teacher, and student, and that therefore the meaning of the term should be determined by the closest context, which for the

Apostle Paul is the Old Testament scriptures found in the

Greek Septuagint. If those things are all established, and I've never heard anyone even attempt to respond to these things, then the meaning is transparent and clear in those passages.

Now, the argument in essence that has been presented is, well, look, those are all in regards to idolatry.

Well, folks, almost every type of sin is a form of idolatry, is it not? When we break

God's law, are we not demonstrating by so doing that we do not love

God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? We love ourselves and our own desires. When a person steals, the person knows that God's law says do not do so, and yet because of a covetous spirit, because of a desire to possess something that belongs to someone else, a person steals.

Now, that person may not have problems with adultery. That person may not have problems with, they may not have been a disobedient child in their youth, but that does not change the fact that that act is both idolatrous and sinful, even though they may be able to point to other things and say, well, look, yes,

I stole, but I have a wonderful relationship with my wife. That shows that I'm actually a loving person.

Well, that doesn't change the reality of the sin of thievery or the reality of the sin of covetousness or anything else.

Yes, it may be in the context of idolatry, but that doesn't make it any less sinful.

Was homosexuality involved in idolatrous worship? Yes. Does it have to be involved in idolatrous worship to be sinful?

The answer is no. Now, when we come to asking for, in a debate situation, a factual or some sort of a basis from the text of Scripture that we can examine and say, okay, here's why the thesis for one side or the other needs to be established.

Each time we have come to the point of saying, well, these biblical passages are not descriptive of certain kinds of homosexuals.

The resultant data that has been offered has all been experiential.

This has been my experience. This has been the experience of other people that I know. Now, I could mention people who would contradict that experientially, but you see, since they're not here and my personal experience is not something to be tested by someone else, then you can't make a decision based upon that.

This evening, we're asking the question, is homosexual marriage something that is consistent with Scripture?

We have seen that the Bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman, that this is a part of God's creative decree, that it is the foundation of the family that then brings forth the family unit, that the individuals involved in that are created male and female by God, that this is based upon God's creative decree, and that as a result of that, we understand what the

Christian concept of marriage mentioned in Hebrews chapter 13, the marriage bed is undefiled, marriage to be held in honor by all, that that marriage, in that context, you could not possibly establish that to mean any kind of marriage, whether a polygamous type of relationship, we are in Utah here, or any kind of relationship that involved two males, two females, one male and two females, one female and two males, anything else along those lines, marriage is not a term that is up for definition even by the

Supreme Court or the legislative bodies of the United States or any other nation on God's green earth.

God defines marriage, it is His holy institution, and He has defined it for us.

Now we have not really addressed that issue nearly as much as we've addressed the issue of homosexuality as a whole from the pages of Scripture, but when we do so, we discover a consistency, a consistency from Genesis 13 and the first reference to the term wickedness that will be applied to that type of behavior, through Leviticus, through the entire

Old Testament, and into the New Testament, where there is nothing that is said that would say, well, that was just a cultural issue back then, we can go ahead and dismiss those things, we don't have that instead, we have

Paul utilizing this type of homosexual behavior, both in lesbianism and in male homosexuality in Romans chapter 1, as an illustration of the twisting of the creator -creation distinction.

And then we have Paul, again drawing, showing the consistency from the Old Testament terminology in 1

Corinthians 6, 9 and 1 Timothy 1, 10, telling us that these activities are right along with many other sins, like I said, everyone in this room probably felt at some point in time that emotion that comes with recognizing that that is a sin that I myself know and know far too well.

And so we see the consistency of biblical teaching on each one of these situations.

And so the question then becomes, what is our ultimate goal and what is our ultimate fidelity to what have we pledged ourselves?

As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I believe that the greatest act of love must first be based upon my love for God and that I do not show love for God when

I do not honor His truth. I do not show love for God when

I say, your word may say this, but it would be so much easier for me if I did this, it would go so much better for me if I did this.

I'm not showing love for God when I do that. When I tell my teenage children to do something and they then completely reinterpret my words and end up doing something completely else, which teenagers are very adept at doing, they are not showing respect and love for me because, let's face it, they knew what

I wanted in the first place. I am not showing love for God when I alter His word and do not honor

His word by allowing Him to define His truth. I must start there because I submit to you that any love, quote -unquote love, whatever our society deems that to be, any love that I try to show to someone else that is based upon showing disrespect for my

Creator will in and of itself be destructive both to myself and to them.

So, my love for others must be founded first and foremost upon fidelity to God's truth and love for Him.

And then when I love Him, that means there's going to be those times when I have to say things that are unpopular.

Paul, when he wrote to the Corinthians, he had to say a lot of very hard things to them, but you'll notice he said those things anyways.

Why? Because of his priorities, because of what was most important to him, and because of his love for God and for them.

You see, when it says, such were some of you, we cannot limit that artificially to you, some of you were members of idolatrous cults that engaged in only this kind of homosexuality.

That makes no more sense than saying, such were some of you who were covetous, but you were only covetous within the context of idolatry.

No, he's talking to everyone who was covetous, everyone who lied, and in fact, he's referring to all homosexuals as well.

That is the only consistent way to read the text. And we honor God when we honor his word and believe it for what it says.

Thank you very much. We're going to now have 15 minutes of questions from each speaker to the other.

We're going to start with 15 minutes of questions from Pastor Bradshaw to Dr. White. Okay, it's on, all right.

In your rebuttal there, you mentioned that about marriage being between a man and a woman and not involving polygamy.

How do you take that into account when you look at the scriptures and Jacob had more than one wife, Solomon had 700 wives, most people in Abraham had more than one, and they had wives and concubines, which were second -rate wives.

How do you take that into account when you have second -class wives? Well, that's exactly the

Lord Jesus' point in Matthew chapter 19. From the beginning, it was not so. He's answering the question in regards to divorce, and he first lays the foundation of what

God designed in regards to marriage. And man has, in many cultures and in many countries, gone away from that standard.

And as a result, you can see what happened. Look what happens in David's situation with the disruption in his family.

Look what happens with the sadness in Abraham's family. Solomon is dragged off into who knows what in regards to idolatry because of his situation.

So the point being that the Lord Jesus understood that in Genesis 2, we have

God's creative decree, and that then becomes, you'll notice in 1

Timothy and in Titus, becomes the standard for the elders of the church as well. And so even in cultures where that might be an acceptable practice for the

Christian, for the biblical Christian, that would not be an acceptable practice because the standard is provided by the high creative decree of God.

Now, my understanding, though, is that when Paul was talking to Timothy and them, the leaders were only to have one wife.

It didn't restrict anyone else. Well, I said that the elders are individuals.

I was referring to the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy and in Titus, and that the elders are literally called one -woman men.

That standard which is laid out for us in Matthew chapter 19, that does not mean,

I certainly don't take that to mean that the individuals in the church were allowed to engage in any sub -biblical form of marriage either.

But certainly, Jesus himself said from the beginning, this was God's creative decree, and man pays when man goes away from what

God says that he should do. But under the law, there's no restriction. Under what law?

The Levitical law or the Torah. The Torah gave the right to divorce, and in point of fact, that particular law does not address that issue directly in the sense of regulating it, and hence, those individuals had to find other ways around the standard that was given by God, and in so doing, every single time, brought tremendous pain to the children and to themselves and to the women that were involved.

The Bible's filled with the sad testimony to what happens when we go against God's standard. Right, but technically, there was no law against plural marriage.

Not in the sense of a technical word that was put forward outside of recognizing what

God had done in the creation, and Jesus then interpreted that way in Matthew chapter 19. I don't see any other way of interpreting his words in Matthew 19.

Now, the second question I have is, as far as I know, the reference that Paul gives in Romans is the only place where we see lesbianism talked about.

You don't find it in the Old Testament, and in reading

Richard Freeman's commentary on the Torah, he suggests that the reason you don't find it in the

Torah is because with multiple wives, there is no place of restriction where it says a husband cannot be sexually involved with more than one of his wives, and in doing so, would automatically involve a lesbian -type relationship.

Well, actually, I think a much more fair reading of Paul's words in Romans chapter 1, he uses a form there that says, even their women.

That is, he expresses a level of amazement, which I've always understood to be in regards to the fact that the woman who has the maternal instinct, so on and so forth, would be less likely to this type of behavior.

But I don't see any basis, certainly in Paul's understanding, and I take Paul to be an apostle to the

Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore to have a significantly better interpretation of the law than any modern commentator would,

I don't see that he has any sense here that he is introducing something that's new. In fact, it's almost like this is a given.

I mean, this is an illustration of what he's giving here, and that is what happens when there is this consistent twisting of the creator -creation relationship at the beginning of verse 27.

Twisting of the relationship? So you're assuming, or what you're presenting, then, is that he's talking about leaving the natural for the unnatural.

Well, that's the terminology he uses here. I was referring to the immediate context, and that is that Paul is saying that these individuals, that this whole basis, the foundation of human sin, is that even though we know

God exists, we suppress that knowledge, and then that shows itself in the various forms of sin that man manifests in all sorts of different ways, and of course, in Romans 1, many of those things are described.

I would agree with you, or agree with the question. I don't know that you would necessarily hold the viewpoint that when it talks about natural function, unnatural, in the verses 27 through 28, 26 to 27, that yes, that is making reference to the fact that there is a natural sexual function based upon the creative action of God, and that lesbianism and male homosexuality involves unnatural sexual relation.

Yes, I would agree. So you don't interpret that to be at all that women have a natural attraction for men, and men have a natural attraction for women, and that when they step outside of that, that that's what

Paul's talking about? No, I certainly would agree that there is a natural attraction as far as the woman for a male, and for a male for the woman, yes, and that what is being described in verses 27 to 28 is a twisting of what is natural.

That again goes back to the illustration of God is created one way, but man refuses to accept that, and all of his forms of sin, in some way, shape, or form, involve a twisting of what

God himself has already created, whether it's all forms of adultery between, even if a man engages in sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, that likewise is a twisting of God's ordained relationship that is to be between a man and a woman, a man leaves his father and mother, is joined to his wife, the two, there's the two, become one flesh.

That was God's creative design, and man is incredibly talented at finding ways to come up with new ways to get around that.

In looking at the Old Testament, I find that in cases like Judah, traveled to the sheep sheared and stopped at the tent and had sex with a prostitute, which turned out to be his daughter -in -law.

There seems to be no condemnation at all for that behavior.

Samson frequented prostitutes frequently, and he was a judge in Israel. What was the change that was brought about by the law that didn't seem to be there before?

I don't believe that it is a proper reading of the text to say that, well, because there is not a reiteration of the condemnation of these things, that that means that the readers of that text would have understood that, oh, well, he could do that, that was fine.

Samson could do that, that was fine. You're dealing with a situation, a period of time there where individuals,

I mean, some of the things recorded in the Book of Judges are incredibly even difficult to read, the story of the raping of the concubine by the men of the city.

You don't then have a three -paragraph condemnation of what they did. There doesn't need to be a three -paragraph condemnation of what they did.

It is a recording of what these people were all about and what they were doing, and you see

God's judgment coming upon them, but you don't have to have a lengthy condemnation when people already know what

God's law is. The fact of the matter is, we know in our hearts and our minds what

God's law is on those things as well. In looking at the material, one of the aspects they looked at with Sodom and Gomorrah was the aspect that not all sex has to do with sex.

Rape is not an act of sex, it's an act of power, domination, and control.

And in looking at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it reminded me of the incident that happened earlier where Sodom was captured by some kings and they were carried away, and Abraham, in fact, saved them.

One proposal was that there could have been a certain amount of fear involved where the men were going there to sodomize these people, to humiliate them into submission and control.

And do you see any possibility for that? I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

The first reference to the wickedness of Sodom is prior to the battle, the

War of the Kings. Genesis 13 says, now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the

Lord, and then the War of the Kings is Genesis 14. So I'm not sure what the relationship of your question is,

I'm sorry. Well, the relationship I got was that it wasn't necessarily an act of sexual, homosexual act, but an act of degrading these people.

In your book, you even point out that Lot, when he approached the angels, bowed down to them in the courtyard and implied that he knew something was different about these men than just ordinary men.

Could that not have struck a certain amount of fear in the men of Sodom, where they came to dehumanize this man?

Well, the text says that they bring them out so that we may know them. Now, as you may know, in various pro -homosexual writings, there's any number of interpretations that have been offered for that.

But if you would agree with me that they are talking in a sexual way there, his response obviously shows that he was,

I don't see that in the request of the men initially that you have any proof of gang rape at that point.

What becomes violence is after the annunciation of the wickedness that was seen before the angels ever came in Genesis 13.

And it says the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked. I don't see any basis for reading their wickedness as being something that was not an everyday element of lifestyle.

I don't see anything in the text that leads me to believe that the passage is not relevant to the fact that what they were doing was wrong in God's sight and that these individuals were seeking a homosexual encounter with these men and that Lot did not want to see that happen.

In fact, I think that's what Jude or 2 Peter is talking about when it says that Lot's soul was tortured daily by the behavior of the men around him.

It wasn't just a matter of lacking hospitality or something like that. It was the behavior that he saw around him.

And you don't think that could be related to idolatry? Well, I think that all, as I just mentioned,

I think all forms of sin are related to idolatry so I would never say that.

If you mean in that nothing is mentioned about temples, shrines, false gods, that's not mentioned in Genesis 18,

I would certainly say that any particular sin is normally accompanied by a complex of others.

None of us have just one problem. But the fact remains that Lot knew what the men of the city would desire to do and that's why he acted the way he did and sought to protect them.

The other point is it says all the men were there. All men had a homosexual desire. That's the way some people interpret it.

In, again, Friedman's commentary on the Torah, he says that the word that's translated to men is actually misinterpreted because it should be all the people were there, not just the men.

I would disagree with him. The Hebrew actually is, you can use another term to refer to just simply the people and in Genesis the term is repeated twice and then with a descriptor to make sure that we know exactly what's being used here.

And there is, however, when it says every single, I would not take it to mean every single man for only one reason and that is that once these men are struck blind,

Abraham goes and finds the men who were supposed to be his future son -in -laws, attempts to convince them to flee the city.

They basically laugh at him and dismiss him. And so evidently, since they were going to be marrying his daughters, they were not a part of this group and so there is a specific group and the entirety of that group in that city is what came to Lot's door and the only thing

I can see in the text that unites them together was their homosexuality. So you don't believe it was every man from every quarter of all ages?

I believe that there were men from every stratus in the city, that is poor men, people in the middle, if they had a military, whatever it might be, but I simply point out that Lot, when the men were struck blind, went looking for the sons and there's nothing in the text that says that they had been struck blind so obviously his future son -in -laws had not been standing outside the house at that particular point in time.

They were going to be married to women and hence they were not there that night. And this wasn't it?

Yes it was. Okay, my apologies. We'll now have 15 minutes of questions from Dr. White to Pastor Bradshaw.

Pastor Bradshaw, would you agree with me that we do not see anywhere in the text of the testament any mention of, regulation of, recommendation of homosexual marriage?

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Okay, do you believe in, do you embrace the doctrine of sola scriptura?

The infallibility of scripture? Sola scriptura being the scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church?

No. Okay, would you? I believe in the Holy Spirit and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Okay, do you believe that the canon of scripture is closed?

As far as written documents, yeah. Okay, so there's no more modern revelation?

For the world, no. For individuals, yes. Okay, this, you made reference in your opening statement that the

Spirit spoke to you in the same way in which God proved He existed, that this lifestyle was in essence the way that God had made you?

Yeah. Would you consider that to be revelatory? Would that be revelation from the

Holy Spirit? For me, not you. Okay, and so is revelation for you fallible or infallible revelation?

Okay, let me rephrase that. How do you test what you feel is a revelation for you from God?

According to what I remember from the scriptures, the Spirit brings you peace and joy and calmness and not turmoil.

And so when that revelation came that Jesus is the Christ, my Savior, there was a peace, there was a calm that let me know that that was in reality true.

When I accepted the Lord as my Savior, there was a peace that came into my life that was different from before, from the turmoil of questioning, from the turmoil of fear, from the turmoil of doubt.

And that peace that came into my life was the same one that when I went to the Lord about my sexuality and the

Lord told me I was fine, that I was the same person I had always been, that I just knew who

I was, it was the same exact peace. Last evening we had a debate here on the subject of Mormonism, and in speaking with thousands of LDS people,

I have had thousands of them tell me that when they prayed about the

Book of Mormon, when they prayed about Joseph Smith, when they prayed about whether God was once a man who lived on another planet, became a

God, and whether they themselves could become a God, they received a deep and abiding peace, and they were made peaceful and joyful and conflicts ended.

If a Mormon said that to you, would you simply have to accept their resultant theology as being equally as valid with your own given what you just said?

Having been a Mormon in my previous life, if I want to put it that way, before, not in reincarnation,

I was raised in the

LDS mission. In fact, my call to ministry happened when I was a

Mormon missionary, which was contrary to what the church taught. At the time, I rejected it because it was like, you mean

I'm supposed to be a bishop? And it's like, no, you're supposed to be a minister. And it was like, get thee behind me, Satan. And I ignored that and ignored it because I saw no reason for God to call me to ministry.

But some 30 -something years later, here I am. Okay. All right.

So when you left the Mormon church, though, you no longer embraced, for example, its theology of God or exaltation to Godhood, right?

No. Okay. I don't embrace it. You don't embrace it, so you did reject that. Right. I don't believe we will become gods.

Okay. So, returning to my question, and now knowing a little bit more of the background, if, how do you test what is given to you if, in point of fact, if I were to say

I too have prayed about these things and I have a very strong feeling concerning the propriety of my remarks, are we simply limited to your experience versus my experience?

Or is there an external standard that judges your feelings, your emotions, and my feelings and my emotions as well?

Well, I look at the scripture in, I believe it's Corinthians. I'm not, by any means, a scholar on this stuff because my brain won't work that way.

But if I remember right, in the commission it talks about the law, and it says that the law kills, but the spirit brings life.

And when the spirit brings life, it brings a joy and a peace that surpasses that.

And so I believe for each one of us there are going to be things in our lives that we're going to go to the

Lord with, and the Lord is going to reveal to us those truths.

Like, you believe that Jesus is the Christ, your Savior. That didn't come from book learning.

It came from the witness of the Holy Spirit. Well, I'm supposed to be asking the questions.

If I were to say, theoretically, that my belief in the deity and person of Jesus Christ is based upon the objective revelation of God and is made real to me by the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in my life, maybe that would get us back to the issue of the debate. And that is, isn't the propriety or impropriety of homosexual marriage something that is external to you and I?

That's external to us? In other words, isn't the rightness or wrongness of it something that is right or wrong whether you and I exist or not?

I don't believe so. Because like I said, when I look at marriage, it's a covenant, it's a contract.

If you look at marriage in the Old Testament, it wasn't performed in a church. It was a contract between people, oftentimes arranged by families.

If you look at Jonathan and David, and like I said, when I read the story, I saw the contract that was there, the commitment that was there, the love that was there.

And it rang very true to me that it was everything that a marriage was. And David even commented that his love for Jonathan was more than that of women.

And men and women in those days didn't have platonic relationships. So, I see that commitment there in the same light as a commitment that my partner and I have.

Well, but the question I'm asking though is, is it your position then that there is not an objective answer to the question of the debate this evening whether homosexual marriage is or is not consistent with the

Bible? Is there an objective answer to this question? That exists whether, you know, if a plane landed on this auditorium right now and took all of us out instantly, the issue still faces our nation.

Right. And so whether you and I exist or not, is there not an objective right or wrong answer to this question?

Or is it not an issue that really has the resolution? In my mind, it isn't a resolution. Okay, so from your perspective in this debate, it's right for you, but it may be wrong for me.

Yes. Okay, and so when we come to the issue of the very definition of marriage from a biblical perspective, the

Bible really doesn't answer the question, does it? In the sense of creation where it took place there, yes, in that light, it does.

Now, in regards to some of the passages that we have looked at, you just said, for example, in regards to Dave and Jonathan, that their relationship had everything that marriage had.

And yet there was no, there is not referenced in scripture, any sexual relationship, any offspring.

And in the very first definition of marriage, leaving father and mother and becoming one flesh, clean to his wife.

So are there not a number of elements of the marriage relationship that are even there in the first decree that were not a part of the relationship between David and Jonathan?

Yeah, they had no children. David left his father and mother, moved in with Jonathan, was there.

There are some things that I've heard that I don't put a lot of cadence in.

Questions that arise in my mind at the parting of Jonathan and David when they kiss until, they kiss to that weird point where it says that David exceeded.

And different things go, what is that? That was always the question in my mind.

I recently attended a service where the rabbi talked about that passage. And according to him, the terminology right there is, in his words, was that David climaxed.

I'll take that with a grain of salt and go from there. So. You would recognize in reality that the terminology that's used there, to call that a stretch, especially in light of, if David did, in fact, write many of the

Psalms that are attributed to him that extol the law, would not David have been familiar with Leviticus?

Oh, yeah. Would that not have made him somewhat of a hypocrite to write those Psalms? Somewhat. So if we believe.

Well, I don't know. I don't know necessarily because he wrote a song, he sang a lament for Jonathan, his love for Jonathan, and how it was more than his love for women.

But if that extremely unusual and not believed by any Hebrew scholar that I know of, and I've taught

Hebrew myself, interpretation of that passage from that rabbi were to be accepted, then there would be some type of sexual activity being implied and knowing what

Leviticus says, how then could David say the things he says about the law in the Psalms without himself being a hypocrite?

Unless the Bible is inconsistent with itself. Well, and it could be.

I mean. So would you agree with me then that would you, could you understand how someone in my position,

I believe in the inspiration of scripture, I believe it is Theanostos, God breathed, to use the terms of Paul, I believe it is inerrant,

I believe that Jesus himself taught that it was God speaking to us, and hence completely self -consistent with itself.

Could you understand why someone such as myself would see not only a consistency in regards to homosexuality from Genesis all the way through the

Pauline epistles and into Peter and Jude, but also would then see a consistent teaching regarding the nature of marriage and would feel that the scriptures then must be obeyed in regard to this issue?

Oh, I can see it. Yeah, I used to walk that line. But then again, because of my own life,

I had to re -examine it. And when I re -examined it, I didn't find that I was walking in that wrong.

Again, because of the witness of the Spirit to me said, told me that I was fine. The other thing

I was concerned about was about people were going to think. And the other thing the Spirit let me know was that it wasn't my problem.

Would you say that it would be fair then that to summarize the thesis of the debate as to in essence say that your defense is a defense that is only directly relevant to yourself and to anyone who claims the same spiritual experience that you claim?

Yeah, because a heterosexual person is not going to go to the Lord about this issue and ask them if that's, maybe it just doesn't happen.

What would you say to an individual who goes to the

Lord and says, I have struggled with covetousness my entire life.

I'm never happy because I never have enough. I work 80 hours a week because I've got to always keep up with the

Joneses. I struggle with covetousness and I went to the Lord and he told me, but that's how

I made you. And then I had peace and I had acceptance and now

I realize that all the prohibitions against covetousness in the Scripture actually don't refer to me as a person of the church.

Knowing the destructiveness of covetousness in a person's life, how would you respond to their assertion that the

Spirit had testified to them with great peace and joy that those passages were not referring to them?

I'd have to look at what change took place in their life. Did anything change? If they're still coveting but they just now simply feel that, well, that's not applicable to me because those who were coveting in that passage were people who had turned their back on God.

I love God. This is how God has made me. God has made me a coveted. And the

Holy Spirit has testified to me that this is how I'm to understand Scripture. What would you say to them given what you have said is your ultimate authority here this evening?

I would have to tell them that it doesn't make any sense to me but I don't know the attitude they went with.

I don't know. I don't know. Thank you. We'll now have five -minute closing statements beginning with Pastor Bradshaw.

It's been kind of fun to be in here tonight. I shouldn't say kind of fun. It has been. But I do need to apologize to Dr.

White because I'm not a debater. I told them that when I signed up for this.

I says, well, you're going to be very disappointed because I'm not good in the art of debate. I was never made that way.

And so I'm not good at presenting those things and pulling up data off the top of my head. And I'm a different person than probably

Dr. White used to debating. I'm not a professional debater in all these things. And my brain doesn't remember a lot of passages.

So I can't pull up scripture and verse just like that. I have a learning disorder. So I have to listen to a lot of the stuff on tapes.

And it's hard to quote a tape sometimes. And so I apologize for that.

But it has been good here tonight to express to you just the way the

Lord's worked in our lives. And when I say our lives, I am the pastor of a church. And we have between 35 and 60 people that attend every

Sunday. And we worship the Lord. We sing praises to the Lord. We pray to the Lord. We trust the

Lord with our whole hearts, for our whole lives, for every part of our being that we have. We have to trust the

Lord. I have to trust in the Holy Spirit. I have to trust in Jesus Christ for my salvation. Because I can't do it on my own.

There's nothing I can do. And I'm very aware of that fact, that without Jesus' sacrifice,

I'm lost. And there's nothing I can do about that. And so that's the first priority in my life, is that Jesus is the

Christ, my Savior and my Redeemer. And that I depend totally on the

Lord. And the people that attend my congregation, a lot of people walk in there, they're very wounded. They're very hurt.

I have friends that are dead because of the struggle with homosexuality.

A young man a while back, his mother said she'd rather he be dead than gay, so he obliged her. And it makes my heart die when things like that happen.

Another friend of mine ended up shooting himself in their backyard. He was so angry.

And I don't like to see that. I don't like to see people angry because of things exactly like what's taking place tonight.

And Dr. White says that he, you know, it's out of love. And I'm sure that it is. And I'm sure that it's very sincere.

But also in that same love, when you're continually told that you're an abomination, that you're detestable, that your lifestyle is this, that, or the other, it can take a big toll on your life.

And then when you finally go to the Lord, and you put your complete trust in the Lord for your salvation and for your life, and the

Lord lets you know that you're fine, like in my, like I say, all I can witness is my own life, that I'm fine, that my walk with the

Lord is good, that I'm the same person I'd always been. I just know who I am. And that, yes, other people would be disappointed.

And they have been. When I first came out in 1978, I was an outcast at my work for two weeks.

And then gradually people apologized because they realized I wasn't any different than the returned missionary had been before.

My behavior wasn't any different. And that I was a lot happier than I'd ever been.

And the irony of the whole part was, is when I walked back in, people knew. And I didn't tell anyone.

But they knew. There was a peace about my soul, about my spirit. And that's all

I can rely on. Because I look at the scriptures, I read all kinds of people's arguments, pro and con, about what it means to be gay, whether it's right or wrong.

And I could tell you, I can look at it all. And I had to take it to the Lord. And I had to give it to him.

And the answer was, is that I'm fine. I just know who I am. And so I have to rely on that spirit.

And that's all I can do. We're learning more and more all the time. We're learning that, medically, that there's a good chance that it is a medical reason.

That there is some hereditary part of it or something. I mean, we look at my family. We have a great uncle.

My brother thinks I'm named after my father's boyfriend. I, surprised me, because I hadn't thought about it.

He came up with it. And so there's indications that it might be medical there. And scripture have a lot of times not looked at that part of it, that aspect of things.

I'm not saying that's the answer. But I'm saying that if you have that struggle, if you know somebody that has the struggle, take them to the

Lord in prayer and trust what the Lord tells you. And listen to that spirit.

Thank you. We'll now have a five -minute closing statement from Dr.

White. If we believe with the

Lord Jesus, that when we read the scriptures, God is speaking to us and that we are going to be held accountable for those scriptures.

If we believe what the apostles taught, that the scriptures are God -breathed, that they are, in fact, the very speaking of God, then we have seen the consistent testimony of those scriptures this evening.

And while we understand personal experiences, I just want to redirect your attention to the last question and answer period and the question that I asked.

What about that person who is covetous? What about that person who steals?

What about that husband who simply cannot be faithful to his wife and then comes to you and says, look,

I've struggled with this my entire life. This is just the way that I am. God did not create me to be monogamous.

He created me to commit adultery and I've gone to Him and I've laid this before Him and God, by His Spirit, has told me that I'm okay.

What do we say? If our ultimate authority is, well, here's a person who otherwise is very moral and is very loving in other relationships and gives of himself or herself, are we to say that, well, it's okay.

That must be the Spirit that was speaking to you. That's why we have the Word of God. The Word of God does not change and the

Word of God tells us when the Spirit is speaking to us and when something else is speaking to us.

The Spirit never contradicts the Word of God. And that Word of God in Romans 3, after summing up the sentence of sin upon all people,

Jew and Gentile, says that the reason that God has done this, the reason

He has brought this sentence of condemnation is not because God's just a mean, unloving

God. But instead, it is so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.

The picture of the Scripture there is of the individual who stands before the judge and his head is down.

It's not the person who's still talking and saying, I'm not as bad as that person. I'm not as bad as that person.

I have a reason why I do this. I have a reason why I do that. No, that's not the illustration that's used. The picture is of the person who recognizes the righteousness of the judge to say, you are guilty.

And you see, my friends, the New Testament does not preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who are still speaking about their own rightness.

The New Testament presents the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who accept

God's definition of sin and God's just sentence upon them.

That person who's heard the bad news is now ready to hear the good news.

Because you see, when we talk about the death of Christ, when we talk about his substitutionary atonement, we need to realize that he bore the wrath of God against sin.

What sin? The sin that God defines, not the ones that we define. And so you see, when we talk about 1

Corinthians 6, 11, such were some of you, you see that gospel is so powerful.

When God by his spirit brings that kind of conviction to where there's no more making of excuses, the mouth has stopped.

Now there is that acceptance of God's authority to define what is and what is not.

Then by God's spirit, that person is ready to hear about a

Savior, a Savior who can free, a Savior who can heal, a

Savior who can change. The thesis this evening, we sort of lost track of, but it's okay.

It's understandable. Marriage is defined in Scripture as man and woman.

That was God's creative decree. That's been established. The question then has become, well, can we sort of expand that?

And on what basis? And I would submit to you that fundamentally, the conclusion of this debate has been for the person who says my feelings, my emotions, and my experience must be subjugated to the ultimate authority, the word of God, must be subjugated to that which is objective and unchanging to that individual, the thesis of the debate this evening has been decided.

I hope that you have listened carefully, and I hope that you have been blessed in your understanding of these things as we have presented them to you this evening.

Thank you very much for being here. All right.

We're going to have questions. I'm going to alternate between our speakers. Some of these I'm going to have to read while they're answering.

I ask that you try to keep your responses to under two minutes, and if possible, keep them even shorter so we can squeeze in as many as possible.

We'll begin with Dr. White. Dr. White, do you see yourself as more deserving of heaven than a homosexual?

No one is deserving of heaven outside of Jesus Christ. The very idea of deserving heaven is foreign to the

Christian faith outside of a recognition of the perfect merit of Jesus Christ. The only person who enters into God's presence is the person who is united to Christ.

Now, what does that involve? I believe it involves the work of the Holy Spirit, and part of that work of the Holy Spirit is the conviction of sin and bringing a new nature.

That new nature recognizes the authority of God's Word and seeks to be in submission to that Word and is not rebellious thereto.

So I am no better than anyone else. I've experienced covetousness and unclean thoughts, anger and pride and arrogance, all of which

God says are hateful in His sight, and I would not stand before God outside of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

You can deal with it. We can split it up if necessary, but several questions deal with the

Bible saying in Proverbs 14, 12 and 16, 25, that there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is the way of death.

Reference is also made to Matthew 7, 21 through 23. It says, Not everyone who says to me,

Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day,

Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?

Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you away from me, you evildoers.

How do you reconcile your feelings with the command of Scripture?

Basically the same way that Dr. White, my whole salvation relies on the Lord. I believe that there are people that will say,

Lord, Lord, and for me, whenever I've looked at that passage, I find those for me, that people are those that have an intellectual knowledge of the

Lord, they have an intellectual knowledge of the Savior, but they don't have that spiritual commitment.

They don't have that tie, that witnesses to them through the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the

Christ, that Jesus is the Lord. It's very easy for people to pick up the Bible and study the

Bible, to know all about Jesus, to know all about God and all those things, but yet not to have any connection on a spiritual level.

So every time I've looked at that passage, that's what I've learned from what

I've studied, is that people will look at the Lord, but they don't have that spiritual tie.

It's easy to know about things, but not to have that spiritual connection.

And like Dr. White, I rely completely on the Lord in everything that's going on.

Okay, Dr. White, reflecting on Romans 8, 1 through 13, particularly verses 5 through 9, what does

Paul's comment that those who live by their natural inclinations can never be pleasing to God, say about the homosexual's contention that if you were born that way, attracted to the same sex, then that provides authorization for the active homosexual that such a lifestyle is acceptable and compatible with a devout

Christian life seeking to grow in holiness? Well, I would agree that if we identify homosexuality as one of the works of the flesh, that Romans 8 would then identify that as something that is directly inconsistent with spiritual life within an individual.

I think that really becomes the issue of this debate, and I think it was also the issue of the citation of Proverbs 14, 12, and 16, and so on and so forth, and that is that fundamentally,

I think the ultimate authority by which we answer these questions has to be examined this evening. And in my question and answer period, what

I was attempting to get to is what is the ultimate authority? Is it the consistent interpretation of the text of Scripture?

Or is it a spiritual experience that then becomes the filter through which

Scripture is going to be seen and Scripture is going to be prioritized? And I think the answer we received was, there is this,

I had a spiritual experience and I can't question that, and therefore, that has certain ramifications as to how

I read the text of Scripture. I would simply submit that if you do not have a means of testing those feelings, of testing that subjective testimony that you think comes from the

Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will never contradict Himself. The only objective revelation you have of what the

Holy Spirit intends is what's in Scripture. And so, we are getting the cart before the horse, we're turning things around backwards in a very dangerous way when we allow our experience to become the lens through which we view the

Scriptures themselves. Pastor Branshaw, when you address 1 Corinthians 6, could you address 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul supports

Leviticus in prohibiting a loving monogamous relationship between a man and his father's wife? I have to read that.

What does it say now? 1 Corinthians 5. You can read that if you want, cut into your time.

Do you want to answer another question? When I look at that, in that particular case, when

I look at that, I see that what is involved there is not just the man and his wife.

If the man is sleeping with his father's wife, there's the... In relationships like this, what you have is more than one person involved.

You have other siblings, you have other relations, you have people involved. You're affecting their lives, not only yourself.

So in relationship to myself and my partner versus this, Scott and I have been together.

His family love and accept me, and my family love and accept him.

So there is an involvement there. But in this case, it's infringing on their own family, the family ties that are there.

Obviously, he's not sleeping with his mother. So the man had more than one wife. My father was married twice.

So that would imply that one of my brothers would be sleeping with his first wife.

That would create more of a problem within the family and is not acceptable.

Like in lust and rape and so on, you're infringing on somebody else's. When you commit adultery, you are infringing on the relationship with your wife or the wife or the relationship of the other person's partner.

You're not just infringing upon yourself. Dr. White, Lewis Sneeds of the

Christian Reform Church has described your view, not dealing with you personally, but just your understanding of Romans 1 is heretical.

Could you please comment? Yes, he has done so in a video that's being put out by Soulforce now.

And in the process, demonstrated that Dr. Sneeds had abandoned the belief in both the inerrancy and ultimate authority of Scripture, especially as how he dealt with Romans 1 and not dealing with the text whatsoever.

The idea that holding to the consistency of Scripture, believing that it's inspired in inerrance and that it's consistent in its teaching on marriage and on the relationship of men and women and on homosexuality and to be consistent in believing those things is heretical,

I think speaks much more to the final position that Dr. Sneeds took than it does certainly to myself.

If it is heretical to believe the Scriptures in that way, then I will most gladly accept that term.

And maybe I'll have a T -shirt made up about it or something like that. I'm not sure. But obviously,

I believe that the real heresy is to accept a position within a church that held at one time in history to the full authority of the

Word of God and then to teach in that fashion. I think that is much more likely to be properly described as heresy.

Genesis 2 .28 tells us God blessed Adam and Eve, man and woman, to be fruitful and multiply.

Sex is God's natural way of fulfilling that. This intimacy is part of what strengthens the relationship of marriage.

Speaking of relationship, taking Leviticus 18 .22,

Leviticus 20 .13, 1 Timothy 1 .8 -10, etc., do you and other proponents counsel against sexual relationships within, or abstinence,

I apologize, contacts are failing me and it's a little bit jumbled here, within the homosexual relationship?

Within the homosexual relationship, as far as when people come to the church,

I encourage people to date and not mate. One of the problems that we really have in our community is that a lot of people have walked away from God and they've walked away from a lot of things in their life and they've just given up and they figure they're going to hell, they might as well have a good time on the way.

And so they get into a very promiscuous relationship. I do not encourage that at all.

I encourage people to date each other, to get to know each other. Like I mentioned, my partner and I were dated for months, we lived together for months, we bought a house together before we ever had a sexual relationship.

And we had established our relationship with each other and we knew that we were going to stay together. We were making that commitment for the long haul.

Have we had knock down, drag out fights? Yes, we have. But that's part of any relationship.

And so I encourage people to, instead of mating, which is all too often happens, to get into relationships and build a relationship with somebody and find out what that is.

And if they get to the point where they can make that commitment to each other, and we have a lot of committed people in our church, then that's a different thing.

Once they make that commitment, then intimacy is a natural part of that relationship.

Dr. White, there are scriptures that mention some ideas that seem absurd in today's world, such as not taking too many steps on the

Sabbath, stoning an adulterous woman, and avoiding certain meats. How do you justify applying your own interpretation of these words instead of obeying them?

Well, I certainly don't claim any personal interpretation as if I somehow have received some special light from the

Holy Spirit that no one else gives. You approach the Word of God as a revelation of God. And when that revelation tells us that there is a distinction between, for example, the ceremonial law, which prefigured the coming of Christ and ministry of Christ, and is fulfilled in the purpose of Christ, and that moral law, which remains consistent, for example, in the question that was asked before about the woman who had his father's wife, 1

Corinthians 5, verse 13, ends with a citation from Deuteronomy in putting the wicked man out from amongst you.

This is a quotation from the very holiness law, the very section of the law that many people say, oh, well, you know, that says don't eat pork, therefore we can throw it all out.

It's pretty, it's not all that difficult to determine those things that were marked out as marking the people of Israel from those things that are part and parcel of the law that's written upon our hearts as to how we are to behave.

And so I find it to be really an example of the assertion that the scriptures are not clear and that they cannot be interpreted consistently on the part of those who try to say that, well, we just don't know.

We just, there isn't enough clarity. We can know, and I think most people are rational enough to recognize that the difference between how many steps you take on the

Sabbath and the prohibition against bestiality or incest speak to two different things, and that the teaching of scripture is clear on those issues.

Pastor Bradshaw, do you believe in deceiving spirits? In deceiving spirits? Yes. Yeah.

We've covered most of the major issues that are on the subject. One that a couple of the questions deal with.

I'll pick one as a representative one. Dr. White, what would you think if one of your children were to become a homosexual?

Well, what would I think? I would deal with them the very same way that I would deal with them if they were to commit an act of adultery, if they were to be found stealing.

And one thing I would not do is if my son were to come home and the police bring him home because he was found stealing from his work.

One topic that would not be on the table is, Dad, I stole from work because the

Holy Spirit told me that's the way I am. And you can't question that. I've gone to God.

I've prayed. I've prayed sincerely. And therefore, this is how God has made me, and you're just gonna have to deal with it.

That would not be on the table. Both of my children are confessing believers, and I would deal with them on the basis of what the

Scriptures teach. And I believe that those Scriptures, being

God -breathed, God made us, God knew the future perfectly. God wasn't caught by anything by surprise.

The Bible doesn't need an update. It doesn't need a new version. God has known about how we function from the beginning, and it's still just as valid in what it says to us today as it was when it was written.

I hope that you will take the opportunity with me now to thank both of our speakers for being kind enough to appear this evening.