The Stonewall Riots and President Obama

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still.

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Just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall, just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a king proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth.

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It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began.

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For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.

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Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, and equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

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Well there you have it. There you have, from the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama yesterday, the enunciation of a radically anti -Christian worldview.

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That's a radically anti -Christian worldview. And I think we need to understand why that is and be able to enunciate to others exactly why that is.

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Why do I say that? There are many people who call themselves Christians who would say, oh, that's wonderful, equality, it's beautiful.

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But let's think about what was said. First, at the very beginning, you have the assertion that equality is related to, and historical incidents noted, all beginning with an

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S, probably chosen for that very purpose. Let's hear it again.

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We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.

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Seneca Falls, universal suffrage specifically for women,

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Selma, civil rights for blacks, and Stonewall?

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Yeah, you heard that right. I wonder how many people in our society understand what

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Stonewall was, even caught the reality of what Stonewall meant.

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June 28th, 1969, Greenwich Village, New York City, 1 .20 a .m.,

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gay author Davin Eisenbach, in Michael Brown's fine book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, gives us the story of what happened, that the

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President of the United States points to as an example of where equality, the equality enunciated in the founding documents of this nation, where equality was defended.

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And here's what Davin Eisenbach tells us. As in most mafia -run joints, the

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Stonewall operators exploited the opportunity to blackmail successful older patrons. A staff member would strike up a conversation with a successful -looking man, learning his name and profession if the mark worked in a law firm or stock brokerage.

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He was later blackmailed with the threat of being outed to his colleagues. The discovery of this operation led to the famous Stonewall Raid on June 28th, 1969.

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Sometime in early 1969, Interpol, the UN -affiliated international police organization, noticed an unusual number of negotiable bonds surfacing in foreign countries and requested the

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New York Police Department investigate whether they were counterfeit. Police detectives found that the mafia had been acquiring large numbers of bonds by blackmailing gay employees of New York banks.

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From studying police reports on various gay clubs, investigators concluded that the extortion rings were operating in Greenwich Village.

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The Stonewall quickly became a prime suspect in a multi -million dollar international criminal enterprise. The police were determined to shut the place down, so during the raid, they actually tore up parts of the bar.

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In keeping with their customary routine, they also began to arrest the transvestites, who were accustomed to being booked and then released a few hours later, along with the bar staff.

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But the rest of the patrons, rather than heading over to another gay bar, as they typically would have done, lingered outside, watching the events unfold and turning it into a festive event.

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Soon, the crowd had grown to 150 interested onlookers. But the good humor vanished when a police officer began shoving a transvestite, who turned around and slammed the cop with his purse.

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Another officer rushed over and clubbed him with a nightstick. Moans and furious yells erupted from the crowd.

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One witness recalled, people began beating the wagon, booing, trying to see who was being hauled out and off.

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Several pigs, cops, were on guard and periodically threatened the crowd unless they moved back. Impossible to do.

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One young man roared, no one's going to F around with me anymore, I ain't going to take this S. Pennies pinged against the side of the paddy wagon punctuated by the loud slam of a beer can.

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As the police tried to arrest more patrons and push them into squad cars, the whole crowd went berserk. Police brutality.

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Pigs up against the wall. I'll skip that term. Beat it off, pigs. Within minutes, the crowd was out of control and the police, fearing for their safety and not wanting to use their guns, retreated into the bar and barricaded themselves in, calling for reinforcements.

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Outside, the crowd's frustration turned into rage. They had had it with their bars being raided. They had had it with being mistreated by the cops.

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Now it was time to fight back. Someone hurled a garbage can through the bar window. Gay patron

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Morty Manford later likened the shattering of glass to, quote, the lancing of the festering wound of anger at this kind of unfair harassment and prejudice, end quote.

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The cops were now under siege, trying to board up the windows with plywood as they continued to wait for reinforcements to arrive.

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The bar door was smashed open, followed by a hail of beer cans and bottles, one of them striking a policeman and opening a bloody gash under his eye.

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Others in the crowd tried to set the building on fire, while another group ripped a parking meter from the pavement and used it as a battering ram to try and break through the door.

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Bricks were hauled at the cops and their vehicles. Chaos was erupting in the streets, and the crowd wanted blood. The mob became even more frenzied when someone in the crowd lit a trash can full of paper and stuffed it through one of the bar's windows, setting the coat room ablaze.

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A short, scrawny kid poured a can of lighter fluid through another broken window, followed by a match. The flames danced dangerously close to the lead officer,

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Inspector Pine. People were in a frenzy, and the impassioned, out -of -control crowd, feeling its power for the first time, was not about to stand down, even when two busloads of riot police arrived.

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Equipped with helmets, shields, and billy clubs, the riot police lined up shoulder -to -shoulder like Roman legions and pushed their way down Christopher Street.

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Squaring off against one of their flying wedges was a brave, if foolish, group of street kids who formed a raquette -style kickline while singing, and I'm going to warn you, this is...

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these are homosexuals singing. We are the Stonewall Girls. We wear our hair in curls.

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We wear no underwear. We show our pubic hairs. The riot police charged into the kickline, smacking the singing ewes with nightsticks.

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Over the next hour, gay rioters dodged cops in the winding streets of the village, setting fires in trash cans and breaking windows.

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News of the uprising spread rapidly. The media was intrigued by the fact that it was homosexuals, hitherto stereotyped as limp -wrist fairies, who were fighting back, and by the evening of the 28th, less than 24 hours after the initial raid, several thousand people had gathered in the village proclaiming, gay power, we want freedom now, and equality for homosexuals.

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And rioting erupted again, with police cars in particular becoming the targets of the crowd's mounting aggression. Once more, riot police were called in to quell the crowd, but a line had been crossed, and for the homosexual community, there was no turning back.

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Thus, the spark that ignited the gay liberation movement was lit. Two nights of rioting in response to a police raid, attacks on arresting officers in an attempt to injure them or even burn them alive, vandalizing of police cars, chaos in the streets.

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This was the Stonewall Uprising. Now, flash forward 40 years,

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June 29th, 2009, Washington, D .C., 7 p .m., President Barack Obama welcomes 300 gay activists to the

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White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, addressing the enthusiastic gathering with the words, welcome to your

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White House. Barack Obama, President of the United States, spoke proudly of the story of the Stonewall protests, which took place 40 years ago this week, when a group of citizens with few options and fewer supporters decide they'd had enough, and refuse to accept a policy of wanton discrimination.

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And two men who were at those protests are here today, imagine the journey that they've traveled.

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So there you have the Stonewall riots, and in the inaugural address of the

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President of the United States, he has associated directly that attack upon police by homosexuals, that act of violence with Selma, with civil rights, well we know that's exactly what the left has done in our land, they have associated the perversion of human sexuality with civil rights.

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They've made the connection, and in the mind of the shallow thinking youth culture, and you don't have to be a youth to be in youth culture anymore, unfortunately, the youth culture is now for people all the way up to 70.

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You don't have to think maturely, you don't have to take responsibility for actions anymore, you can think with your emotions, you don't have to think rationally, and you don't have to think about the future and the consequences of your actions.

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It's the youth culture for everybody now. And so, for those folks, that kind of argumentation, which is irrational, indefensible, if you're allowed to actually engage in debate on the subject, absolutely irrational and indefensible, is now the way that people think.

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And if you question it, then you're a bigot, you're a racist, you're a homophobe, etc., etc., etc.

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No thought involved, just mantras. That's how leftist philosophy and ideology always works.

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You don't think about what this is actually going to do to a country, what it's going to do to families, what it's going to, no, you don't worry about things like that, you just get mantras going, and you get people operating on their emotions, and you forget about the rest of it.

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That's how it works. And so the President of the United States, inaugurating to office a promoter of the profanation of marriage, actually makes the connection, while being sworn in to the highest office in the land, that that wanton act of violence by homosexuals is to be seen as an exercise of the

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Founding Fathers' original concept of equality. Equality.

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That's what we're told. And he went on. Our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.

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Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.

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If we're equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. The love that we commit to one another must be equal as well.

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Well, obviously, a large number of people in our society have bought that.

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They think that's sound thinking. That's great. You know, the love that two men commit to one another is equal to the love of a man for his wife.

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That is now the orthodoxy of this corrupt, evil, despicable society.

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It's a lie. It will never be true. But that is what we're being told.

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And we're being told that if you're going to celebrate the commitment of a husband to a woman for life, to care for her and provide for her and to nurture her and to raise children with her and to establish a family with her, if you're going to celebrate that, then you must, if you're going to be acceptable in this new, brave new world, this brave new society of leftism, then you must celebrate when two men commit to each other.

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Well, not to have children, they can't. And not to be changed by the other because they're actually mere images of each other.

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But it's just a selfish thing. It's I love the mirror, so I'm going to love this person who looks like me. It's completely different, but you still have to celebrate it if you're going to be accepted in Obama's America.

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That's the president speaking. You see, they already have equality.

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If they want to marry, they can marry. It's just they don't get to redefine marriage. But it's coming. It's going to happen one way or the other, either by action of the

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Supreme Court or some other mechanism. It's going to happen unless, unless God unleashes repentance.

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And I'm just going to tell you straight up, historically, repentance normally follows great judgment.

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Great judgment. But I'm going to tell you right now, there is no way you can look at what the

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Bible says about how God deals with nations and say,

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God bless America. God bless that. God bless the profaning of marriage.

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God bless the murder of fifty five million babies that we just marked the anniversary of four decades.

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Well, today, for four decades of the murder of unborn children, and of course, we know more about the unborn child today than we did even then.

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We have less excuse now than we had no excuse then. Everybody knows it was pure judicial activism.

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Everybody knows it was grossly unconstitutional. Everybody knows that.

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But that's what happened. How can you say, God bless that?

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And I know I hear the voices now of those of you, yeah, but this wasn't a perfect nation before then either.

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Well, neither was Germany. But why do we fight Hitler anyways? I mean, that stuff that he was doing, the atrocities.

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We're doing atrocities. You don't think that God's judgment was properly brought against them for those atrocities?

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It's amazing. I listen to people going, yeah, but there was this and there was that. And that's an excuse for for allowing this to go on.

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Shocking, absolutely shocking. The the utter lack of clarity of thought on the part of so many people.

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But there you have it. I was. I was well, I wasn't amazed, we know some of us have been trying to tell the society for over four years now that that we we now have the most radically anti -Christian president that this nation has ever seen and the most radically anti -Christian government that this nation has ever seen.

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The moral and ethical worldview of the people that are in charge of this nation right now is absolutely reprehensible.

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It's a judgment from God. It's a judgment from God. We have exactly what we deserve and it is a judgment from God.

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But we have to still fulfill our calling as a prophetic voice. And call for repentance.

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Oh, wow, that'll go over real well. Yeah, here's here's the message, folks. To say what

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Barack Hussein Obama said yesterday is evil. It's evil. It's not just another viewpoint, it's evil and he must repent of it.

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And if you believe what he said, you must repent of it. Your evil will bring God's judgment.

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That's got to be our message now. What we then hear from folks, oh, you're not fulfilling the law of love.

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I was listening this morning, I got a great workout in this morning, I was listening to Michael Brown. And he was reviewing

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Justin Lee's new book, Torn. This was actually one of his older programs from back, I think, between Christmas and New Year's.

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And he pointed out that just like in all the other books that are coming out right now.

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What Justin eventually comes down to, and it looks like right now. I'm going to be debating him, dialoguing with him at Reformation Montana in in May.

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We hope that works out. But as I've pointed out, the new big push in the current crop of books that are coming out, and it's just a flood of books,

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I don't know how anybody can keep up with them. I mean, I've I've kept up with them thanks to the fact that they come out on Kindle and I can then put them on my iPod and listen to them.

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That's how I do it. But the whole thrust is, well, the

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Bible's unclear about what it says about homosexuality. That's not true. But if you throw enough dust in the air and you quote enough liberals who then quote themselves and then create this alleged body of of scholarship, quote unquote, you can you can try to make it sound like the

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Bible really isn't clear. It is. I mean, anybody who really wants to know. And there's lots of homosexuals that know what the

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Bible says. They're well aware. You say the Bible is unclear on these things, but the

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Bible is very clear, very clear on the law of love, the law of love.

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We are to love God and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so we are to we are to follow the law of love.

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And that's how Justin comes to the conclusion that that, well, since God made him homosexual, then he can be involved in a homosexual relationship.

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But it needs to be a a monogamous homosexual relationship.

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But it's still a monogamous. He can do it because of the law of love. And there are many people who are saying, see, your your response to President Obama's.

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Teaching of an anti -Christian ethic as if it is to mark the very nature of our site, when there is not one of the founding fathers would have agreed with that, your response is unloving.

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How do you respond to that? How do you respond to people? Who say.

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If you're really loving, then you will be accepting, obviously, for a large portion of people in our society, that has become an overwhelmingly compelling argument.

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Was Jesus accepting? Well. He certainly ate with prostitutes and sinners, but he never engaged in the activities of prostitutes and sinners, and his conversation with them was about repentance.

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He never for a second compromised on what God's law said about their activities.

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And that's vitally important because, you see, we're being told that to be accepting now, to be inclusive is to celebrate that which is opposed to God's law.

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But you see, that's not the kind of acceptance you see.

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God will accept any repentant sinner. There is no sin so great that Christ as Savior is not greater.

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But you see, that's what's been lost, is what we now have is a Christian is accepting of sinners without repentance.

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And where do you think that came from? I point my finger directly at every one of those evangelicals that has collapsed on the necessity of the preaching of repentance.

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The free grace people and everybody else, don't even open your mouth about this, because you have compromised on this and your false gospel is very much a part of this.

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It is. The law of love.

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The law of love. Folks, you need to be quick with a response when someone says you're not being loving.

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And here's what you need to emphasize. Jesus lived the law of love.

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He lived the law of love and he died the law.

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You see, if you want to talk about the law of love, then you need to understand that it was the law of love that drove

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Jesus to the cross of Calvary. Because he loved

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God so supremely and so perfectly that he recognized that God's law is not something that can simply be set upon a shelf, set aside and ignored.

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God's law represents his holy essence and therefore his law had to be fulfilled.

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God's wrath had to come against sin and that includes the sin of homosexuality.

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That includes the sin of adultery and fornication and theft and lying and bestiality and incest and murder and anger and cheating and hatred of one's parents.

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All of it. You do not love God if you do not recognize he is holy and that his law, the fulfillment of that law, is the very thing that took

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Jesus Christ to the cross of Calvary. And what we are being told today is that we must deny the necessity of the crucifixion and we must deny what drove

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Jesus to the cross of Calvary, the fulfillment of God's law, so that we can be acceptable in Obama's America.

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I will not bow the knee to Caesar when

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Caesar says, deny Christ. And that is what we are being told.

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So when someone says to you, you're not being loving. When someone says to you,

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Jesus wouldn't have done that. Look them in the eye and say, Jesus so loved God's law that he knew it had to be fulfilled and he went to the cross of Calvary.

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Are you looking at me and saying that the cross of Calvary was a mistake? That it was a great tragedy?

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Have you ever even thought of what Jesus really did there? And folks, unfortunately we have to say that to a lot of Christians too.

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Because a lot of Christians today have an emotional, traditional, ooey -gooey view of the atonement that never even thinks about the fact that in the cross of Christ you have the vindication of the holiness of God and his wrath against sin.

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Amazing that we are sitting here thinking about what the newly re -elected

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President of the United States has said and we have to deal with it by dealing with the atonement.

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People say, you shouldn't be talking about politics. This is theology. When you say that the very freedoms and equalities upon which this nation was based are actually theological in nature so that you need to profane marriage and you need to celebrate homosexual relationships, then you're talking theology.

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And let me tell you something, the left recognizes that we

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Christians will always say these things. That's why they must seek to silence us.

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And they will continue seeking to silence us. It's gonna happen.

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It's gonna happen. Sorry, that was a approximately 28 minute long sermon.

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But when I heard what the President said, I just,

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I was, I was left utterly amazed. And I have to respond.

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Had to respond. We're gonna take a brief break and then take your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341.

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We already have a number of people online. We will start with Jane and go from there.

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So we'll be right back right after. Breaking news from the

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White House and the issue, gay marriage. For a lot of people, you know, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs.

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I think same -sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.

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This comes two weeks after the President announced his support for same -sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

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Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.

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It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.

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How soon will it be before we will also see people losing their freedom? Now more than ever, Christians need to be equipped to be an approved workman of God, correctly dividing the word of truth as we are told in 2

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Timothy 2 .15. Dr. James White and Pastor Jeffrey Neal have partnered to bring you their book, The Same -Sex

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Controversy. If you are Christian, this book is just one of the tools you'll need to be prepared to give a proper defense of the faith in the face of the unrighteous onslaught we face today.

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The authors write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on this subject, explaining and defending the foundational biblical passages that deal with homosexuality, including

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Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and return to God's plan for his people.

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The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy today from the bookstore at AOMN .org

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and don't forget to search for other resources like debates and past dividing lines dealing with this very provocative issue.

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And remember, theology matters. Pulpit Crimes.

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The criminal mishandling of God's Word may be James White's most provocative book yet. White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.

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Based firmly upon the bedrock of Scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see. The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his

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Word. What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows.

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Prostitution using the gospel for financial gain, pandering to pluralism, cowardice under fire, felonious eisegesis, entertainment without a license, and cross -dressing, ignoring

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God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town? Get Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at almen .org.

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The 22nd of January 2013, going to, yes sir?

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I was just, I chose those two spots obviously for a reason, and one of the things that, as you're saying this,

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I'm thinking the pulpit crimes point is so instrumental in how we got here.

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The compromises in the pulpit, the things the shifting from the preaching of the gospel to, you know, it offends people and our congregation would be so much bigger if we just simply stop preaching about this and stop preaching.

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I think of Schuller's thing about years ago, how terrible it was to preach against sin and what a disservice preachers were making.

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The gospel is not ours to edit but to proclaim. There's a reason

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I say that, and at least if you've been consistent with that, you can say you've been consistent.

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I can certainly tell my grandchildren that, yeah, I was there and I spoke out.

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Let's talk with Jane. Hi Jane. Hello. Hi. I attend a

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Reformed Baptist Church up here in the Pacific Northwest, and I've listened to you for about 15 years since becoming

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Reformed along with my husband, and I thank you so much for what

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I've learned from you as well as from my pastor, Tom Lyon. The question that I have is regarding respect for authority.

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My dad was a Marine in World War II, and I grew up loving our country and do very much so today, but I've almost gotten to the point where I stop listening to the news or watching it because the feelings of revulsion that wash over me when

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I listen to this man. How do we go about fulfilling

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God's command to respect those in authority when everything they stand for goes against the core of our very being?

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I will hang up and let you address this if you would be so kind to do so. All right, thank you, Jane. Appreciate the phone call.

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That is the big question today, isn't it? I don't have any simple answers on this because it is, of course, a question that many of us are discussing amongst ourselves right now, and church history will tell us that, well, the reality of the church right now will tell us that we have many brothers and sisters in other lands that live in places where they do not have the freedom to say what we are saying, but they think the things we're thinking.

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There are many believers that live in Europe today that already recognize that if they were to openly say the things that I said this morning, they would be losing their jobs, they could be sued, they could lose their housing.

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There's already the blanket of silence has settled over many

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Christians, especially in northern European nations. We have someone in our chat channel, for example,

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I won't mention any names, but who lives in one of those lands and that is ahead of us in cultural degradation.

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And by the way, when people refer to the progressive movement and the progressive agenda represented by Obama and the left in our land today,

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I just remind you that the term progression can be used of the vehicle that is accelerating toward the cliff.

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That is progression, and unfortunately, on an ethical and moral level, that's exactly what we are seeing.

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And like Jane, I was raised to have warm patriotic feelings toward my nation, and I too struggle with the fact that I cannot say

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God bless America. Right now the only way that a just God can deal with this nation is in judgment, and that means we are going to see a continued decline,

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I believe, in our world standing, in our economy, in our military.

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We cannot pray that God will give success to a military that represents a nation that is doing what our nation is doing.

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It's just not possible, and we want to. We want to be able to support the troops and all that patriotic stuff, but the reality is, where does that come from?

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What's the basis upon which you ask God to bless a nation? And so the question then becomes, you know, how far do you go?

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And that takes us back to Romans chapter 13 that deals with all sorts of issues and related to, you know, what does a

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Christian do when the nation around them says, disobey

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God? Well, we all know that, but where's that line? It was one thing in Acts.

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Don't preach the gospel of Jesus Christ is a violation of God's command, and there is no nation on earth that has the authority to countermand the commands of Jesus.

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So I can say, and I just know

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Assistant Channel, and if anyone goes back, you can look at, you know, Carla used to have a t -shirt.

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I don't know if she still does, but Carla used to have a t -shirt from something I said from September of 2001.

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September 11th or was it September 12th when I addressed it? I think it was September 12th. I said,

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God bless America with true heartfelt repentance.

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That's the only thing we can pray that God will bless this nation with, and I do believe you can say,

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God bless America with repentance. But that's not what most people think when they're saying,

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God bless America. They're saying, God bless America with military prowess and economic expansion and, you know, etc.,

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etc., and that's not what we can pray for.

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We have to pray that God will bless this nation with repentance. But when most evangelicals don't even preach repentance anymore, that's probably why it's not getting prayed so much.

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But back to the issue of where do you draw the line. It was pretty easy in Acts because the governing authorities said, do not do what

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Jesus told you to do. Okay? But where do you draw that line? I mean, the government already teaches and preaches all sorts of things through its arms in the educational system and everything else that are directly contrary to what

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Jesus says to do. School children in California are already being taught to honor and celebrate the life of Harvey Milk.

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That's evil. California needs to repent of that. It's evil. And I know right now, some of you are listening, you're going, but that feels wrong to me because I've been taught as an

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American that that's just, you know, we all have our different views. It is evil to promote evil.

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It's not morally neutral. And you see, it shows how much we have bought into the idea that there are things that are morally neutral and that there can be neutrality.

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And that all comes from, hey, you reject the Lordship of Jesus, hence no repentance.

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It's not surprising then that you end up in the church and you think somehow you are in charge of determining what you will or will not accept as regards to the

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Lordship of Christ. No, the Lordship of Christ is over everyone. Everyone.

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So where do you draw the line? How, in response to Jane's question, do you respect authorities? Well, when

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Barack Obama is not telling me to violate my

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Christian conscience, then I do what I'm told to do. I as an individual, as the head of my family, have to decide when that line is crossed.

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Obviously, the HHS mandate, it's evil, must be resisted.

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It's evil, it must be resisted. When you tell me I have to give you money to murder unborn children, it's easy for us to look back historically and go, oh, those

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Lutherans of Germany, they should have been doing something about what was happening at Sachsenhausen and all those concentrations.

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They should have done something. It's real easy for us to sit back now, 60 years later, and toss pebbles.

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Because, you know, history allows you to do that. But here we are right now.

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A little different situation, isn't it? As far as we are given freedom, we should work to overturn unjust laws and evil laws.

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But what happens when a society is just given over to evil? Are we to, you know, what are we to do then?

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Well, it depends on the society. As long as you have certain freedoms and you can continue to function in such a way as to be able to proclaim the gospel, what happens when you can't even proclaim the gospel?

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That's already happening in places. Then you gotta count the cost. You know, the early

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Christians recognized that the Caesar was standing in opposition to the

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Lordship of Christ, but they prayed for his conversion and salvation. That's what we must do.

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But to pray for the conversion and salvation of Barack Obama today is considered to be a horrific thing to do because, well, he already is a

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Christian, don't you know that? Now, I've always known he wasn't a Christian, for crying out loud. I listen to the man talk.

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I listen to man talk about the Bible. And anybody who can sit under Jeremiah Wright for 20 years ain't a

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Christian! Hello? I mean, we're talking heresy here, folks! It's just simple theology here.

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And so, to respect him means that I pray that he will come to know the truth and that, secondly,

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God will restrain the evil he is attempting to promote upon this nation. We pray regularly that God will restrain the evil of the men and women who are in the highest levels of government in the

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United States who desire to promote ungodliness. That's what we pray for. But I'm like Jane.

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I don't like listening to news. I have to. That's what I like about RSS feeds.

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I can sort of choose at least what my sources are so that I can, you know, but still I've got stuff in there. I wish I didn't have to read it.

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I wish I didn't have to know about the stuff, but I've got to. We can't, you know, it'd be really easy just to build the walls and climb inside and stop engaging the culture, but there's really nothing we can do about that.

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That's not what God's called us to do. That's the monastic approach and that doesn't work. It doesn't work.

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All right, so I didn't have a final answer there because I'm still figuring it out myself.

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You know, this is new and I'm from an older generation that the speed at which things are changing really makes me very uncomfortable.

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Very, very uncomfortable. We continue on.

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Nicholas in Palm Coast. Hi, Nicholas. Hey, Dr. White. I came across this argument for abortion.

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It goes that in the Old Testament, women that were stoned for adultery, if they had conceived a child during the adultery, then the child would be killed, too, and that we

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Christians supposedly ignored that. How would you respond to that? Where did the Bible ever talk about stoning a pregnant woman?

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Well, it doesn't. That's right, that's right, it doesn't. So it's a theoretical construction that obviously is created by a person who simply wants to abuse the text of Scripture.

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They don't want to drive their beliefs from the text of Scripture. Such a person disgusts me, first of all, and more so disgusts

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God, and should be told that to abuse the Bible in that way will bring God's judgment upon them.

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They need to repent and repent quickly, for they do not know what tomorrow might bring. That's the first thing I would say to someone, believe it or not.

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Secondly, the reality is that when the Bible actually addresses issues that could in any way, shape, or form be related to the subject of the death of the pre -born child in Deuteronomy, and, well, there might be some parallel passages, but specifically in Deuteronomy, the reality is that you can make a strong argument that it applies lex talionis, and hence life for life, limb for limb, etc.,

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etc., recognizing the humanity of that pre -born child. So to come up with a theoretical that is not even presented in the

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Scriptures and say, well, you know, if she committed adultery she might be pregnant, but no one really knows, and so stoning was was done there in Israel, and that means that somehow is supportive of our knowing murder of unborn children simply so that we can get away with having sex all the time, is to demonstrate such depraved and perverted thought that I personally would have to pray that God would give me grace to even speak to such a person.

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I really would, because that is such an abuse of the mind that has been given to a man or a woman that it is absolutely shocking, because you and I both know that 99 .9

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% of the abortions that take place in this world are simply so that people can fulfill their sexual appetites with absolutely no consequences.

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That's why it happens. And so the idea that, well, but someone might have been pregnant and we don't really know, as if that somehow has something to do with the fact that the command that is given to us is to protect life, to save life, to honor human life, and yet 99 % of abortions have nothing to do with the stoning of an adulteress.

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They have to do with a woman freely choosing to murder an unborn child because she engaged in some type of adulterous affair, or even worse, when a married woman does it just simply because, well,

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I don't want to be bothered. That's depravity to its fullest extent.

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It truly is. Thanks for the phone call, Nicholas. Let's get to Brian while we still have time here.

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Hi, Brian. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? A little worked up.

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How are you? I understand. I understand. Well, listen, thank you for my call, and I understand that my question may be a little off -topic, but you did at the end of your talk on President Obama's speech bring up the issue of the cross, and so for a number of years now

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I've been identifying myself as an Amaraldian Calvinist, particularly because of the testimony of 1

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John 2, too, but I've been trying to rethink these issues over the past few months, and so I come upon, every time

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I think about this, John Owen's double jeopardy argument, which I think is an absolutely brilliant argument and something that all four -pointers like myself should take into consideration.

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But I'm curious how you personally would respond to this issue.

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I'm not seeking to debate this or anything with you, but I am curious as to how a five -pointer would respond if someone were to bring this up.

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According to Ephesians 2, 3, all of the elect prior to conversion are under the wrath of God, and so it would seem as though that God is still exercising his wrath upon those for whom

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Jesus died, and so as I've been thinking through this issue, that's been one of the things that has been a hang -up for me when

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I consider Owen's double jeopardy argument is that it still seems as though, unless we want to go down the road of John Gill and affirm eternal justification, that it does seem as though that God does still hold people accountable and exert his wrath on those for whom

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Jesus died, even in, I guess, a traditional five -point Calvinist system.

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And so, just for my own personal clarification, I just wonder how you might respond to an objection such as that.

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Well, a couple things. A number of years ago, I forget how many years ago it was, I responded to a colleague by the name of Eric Svensson, who likewise takes that perspective on my blog.

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I would assume that a search for Svensson, S -V -E -N -D -S -E -N, on the blog would pull up what

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I wrote on that subject. If I recall that correctly, I don't think that I did it on the dividing line, but I could be wrong about that.

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It's been enough years ago now that all that blends together, and I'm uncertain of exactly what it was, because I know that we'd had some going back and forth between he and I on the issue of the atonement, and specifically this subject.

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But my recollection was, it's interesting, I'm thinking about right now, my recollection is sitting at my desk in my office.

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So it was written. I'm sorry, what's that, Rich? It's in writing, it was on the dividing line.

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Okay, so my recollection was, I was writing it, and hence that was in my office, rather than in here.

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So just sort of mental connection. So you might want to look that up, because we went fairly into some depth there.

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As to the objection based upon the recognition that there is a point in time when

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God breaks into the elect's life and makes application of that which has been eternally determined for them,

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I would point out that to believe in justification by faith, for example, means that you don't believe that a person is eternally justified, and that there is an application in time as there must be, because we as time -bound creatures experience

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God's grace within the realm of time. And so while there is no question that from eternity past the elect have been chosen by God and united to Christ, there is likewise the reality that it is

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God's choice and God's purpose to bring that about within their lives, and that means that there is a time when there is repentance and there is faith, there is regeneration, there is what

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I would call judicial sanctification, the being set apart, there is the coming of the

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Holy Spirit to indwell as the arabon, the down payment of God's promise.

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There is a radical break with the old life. This is the experience, the transferal out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

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None of that was doubtful at my birth, because nothing in time is doubtful for the eternal

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God. By the way, someone has given me the information that at least you could start looking at 1228 2004, that was nine years ago?

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Wow. Well, not quite nine years, because we're not up to 1228. So, oh,

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I'm getting old. So almost a decade ago. Didn't seem like that long ago, but now

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I feel like I need some Geritol. But anyways, the extent of the atonement, the fifth point of Calvinism, 1228 2004.

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Is that even in the proper database? It is in the proper database for the blog. Okay, all right. Anyways, you can track that down and that will, according to what

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I'm seeing on my screen right now, it is only the 155th entry into our blog.

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So it was pretty, actually 71 and 155, those are early. So early on the blog you will be able to find those things and be able to read more of that.

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So from my perspective, what you have in Ephesians and description of us as children of wrath is the recognition that God does break into our lives at a point in time.

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He chooses when that's going to be. In my life it was very early on. I'm very thankful for that. In other people it's much later in life and therefore they have experiences that then

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God uses in their ministry so they can minister to others, etc, etc. But the point is that none of that changes the intentionality of God's purpose in the salvation of the elect and it certainly, for example, would not change the ground upon which my justification stands or my sanctification stands or my adoption in the family of God were adopted as sons and daughters of God at that point as well.

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All of that was eternally determined and so I don't see how that would in any way change the extent of the sacrificial work for Christ.

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And my real question for my Emeraldian brothers and for anyone who would extend the salvific intention of the atonement, and I'm not sure if that's what you're doing from what you're saying, but for me the beauty of Owen's argument is primarily found in the unity of the action of the high priest.

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That is, Jesus as our high priest. The high priest, and if you go through my sermons in Hebrews 7 and 9,

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I bring this out a lot, they're available on Sermon Audio, and we're almost out of time so I'll be brief, but the high priest when he offers the sacrifice, he offers the sacrifice for those who draw near.

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The sacrifice was not for the unbelieving member of Israel, it was not for the

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Egyptian, it was not for the Babylonian, the sacrifice of the high priest had a specific audience that was then specifically related to the intercessory work of the high priest in the presentation of that blood upon the altar.

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And my question for the Emeraldian is, do you extend the intercessory work of Christ to every human being in the same way that you extend the sacrificial intention of Christ?

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Because the two have to go together. Christ intercedes before the Father for the very same people for whom he offered his sacrifice, because those are both the same function of the high priest.

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That would be the question, okay? Yes sir, yes sir, absolutely, and I appreciate your work, and I'm actually a

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Southern Baptist seminary student, and so I'm also looking forward to perhaps seeing, which I heard you mention that there's going to be a new

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John 316 conference coming up. And I wasn't invited for some reason,

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Brian, but I'm not sure why. Hey Brian, thanks for your call today, we've got to run. Thanks to everybody listening and for putting up with my sermonizing today as well, but I really believe it's vitally important stuff.

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Pray, folks, that we will be ready to count the cost when the time comes that we need to pay the price.

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Thanks for listening. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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