WWUTT 1020 Q&A Rainbow Revival?

The Gospel Is Not to Be Ashamed

Romans 1 16 says, I am not ashamed of the gospel. And very rarely will you find a professing Christian who will say they are ashamed of the gospel. Though you may find a few embracing doctrines contrary to the gospel.

When we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily study in the word of God, that we may take hold of that which is truly life, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gade.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Well, it is that time again, when I must ask for donations. Yes. And we're still coming off, this whole year for us has been really tough. Oh, yeah. Been a lot of things that have been going on in the life of our church this year that has been difficult, not all just been financial.

But I think that the difficulty of things that we've gone through, is kind of reflected in our financial need as well. So it's been a tough summer. We've had a lot of soldiers either deployed or had to move.

The term that we use for that is PCS. Yes. Which stands for permanent change of station. Which is not permanent. It's not permanent.

I don't even know why they call it that. I don't either. Because I guess you're permanently moving your stuff instead of just leaving it.

Yeah. Coming back later. You leave it here and you'll come back for it later, right? Yeah, I guess. Maybe it pertains to your stuff and not you. Probably. Because you're always gone. Yeah. We enter into these seasons sometimes where things get a little bit tight.

And if you would be so kind as to think of us when you do your giving, we encourage you to give to your own church first. Oh yeah, definitely. Support as they have need. And then if you've got anything extra beyond that, and you're looking for a ministry, whether para-church or otherwise to contribute to, then I hope you'll think of us.

Give a gift of 20 or $30 if that's all you can give, or 100 or 200 if you can offer that much. That would be wonderful. And we have had some very generous givers who've even gone beyond that before. Yeah.

And we are truly grateful. And I see gifts like that when they come to us as a huge responsibility. I don't take that lightly. Right. So when we have a gift that comes to us and says, hey, love the ministry, thanks for what you do, here's a gift to your church, then I know, boy, we're gonna be responsible with this.

Yes, definitely. We don't wanna be careless and just kind of sit back and kick back and go, hey, see, people are supporting us, so we're doing fine. It makes us wanna work harder, in fact. So if you think about giving a gift to us, you can go to our website, www .utt .com and click on Give, the menu across the top there, click on the Give tab, and there'll be instructions whether to give online through Simple Give, or you can send a check if you wanna give that way.

And all of these donations come to our church. It doesn't come to me and Becky. It goes to the church, which is a nonprofit organization. So again, the website is www .utt .com. Now, typically on Friday, we take questions from the listeners, and you can submit those questions too when we understand the text, at gmail .com.

But today, I've got something in particular that's gonna take the rest of the program, and this was sent to me by Tom Buck, who is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. He had presented.

Dr. Buck. Dr. Buck, yes. Yes. He had presented this online. I believe this was Monday or Tuesday. He presented this question, how soon until a Southern Baptist Church pastor declares a rainbow revival and leads his church to view homosexuality as acceptable for Christians because their sexual orientation is part of God's creative diversity?

And his answer to that question was, as soon as this past Sunday. And then he posted the sermon from this church in Georgia. And so he and I had talked earlier in the week, and we talked about playing that sermon and responding to it.

And so that's what I'm gonna do today. The content of what we're gonna be talking about today is a little bit more adult in nature. So parents, if you use this podcast to do a family devotional or something like that, and you've got young ears, you may want to listen to this first before we continue.

I mean, the appalling thing about having to preface this sermon with that is this was a sermon. He preached. It was in a church. Yeah, that he preached in front of his entire congregation. Wow. And involves matters that I don't let my children sit and listen to without preemptively having to tell us.

Now, when this man uses this term, here's what he means. But this is what they preached in their church.

Did they have like a children's church available or something? I don't know.

No idea. The church that we're talking about is Town View Baptist in Kennesaw, Georgia, which is just a little bit north of where my parents live. They live on the Southern end of Georgia. Kennesaw is on the, sorry, Southern end of Atlanta.

I was gonna say. Yeah. Yeah. And then Kennesaw is on the Northern end of Atlanta. Okay. And the pastor is Jim Conrad. I've kind of clipped the beginning of this sermon for time, for time's sake. Okay.

But he starts by reading John 3, verses 16 through 21. And that really doesn't make any sense because the passage has nothing to do with what he's talking about. Okay. Nor does he even exegete it. So it's just like he started with John 3, 16 for the sake of reading that, but doesn't ever explain what that passage has to do with the fact that his church is now gonna be an LGBTQ church.

So John 3, 16 through 21, for a refresher, says the following, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

The irony of Pastor Conrad starting with that particular passage is that he's not coming to the light. He's actually fellowshipping with the darkness. Yeah. And so the judgment of God does come against these things.

God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous as is said in the scriptures. And we must flee from sexual immorality. But Pastor Conrad is encouraging his church to embrace sexual immorality. So we're gonna be playing this sermon.

This is again, a Southern Baptist church. I'm a Southern Baptist minister. And this is something that is not very common in the Southern Baptist denomination right now. But I think one of the things this demonstrates is we're gonna be seeing more occasions of this in the future.

And we must be very careful and on guard against the schemes of Satan. The Southern Baptist Convention is in desperate need of another conservative resurgence. And the conservative resurgence that started in the late 70s, early 80s is dying out.

And we desperately need more than that. We need reformation. We need to go back to God's originally intended purpose for the church. And if the Southern Baptist Convention does not see occasions like this as being an urgent call, then we're in big trouble.

So here is Pastor Conrad. And as I said, Becky and I will be breaking in periodically to make comment on his comments. All right.

Membership, Baptism, and a New Sexual Ethic

By now, some of you are aware that I kicked the proverbial hornet's nest in the July 21st meeting of our deacons when I shared my personal journey on homosexuality, faith, and the possibility of church membership for gay and lesbian individuals who profess faith in Jesus Christ and have been baptized upon such profession of faith.

And by the way, these are the only criteria for membership contained in our constitution.

So he's already starting this sermon by saying, see, you can be gay as long as you've made a profession of faith in Christ and as long as you've been baptized.

Yeah, that just sounds like they've, from their foundation of basing it off the Bible, you know, the biblical qualifications. Well, yeah, they don't even have,.

Well, what they're lacking here Or a statement of faith or something. Yeah, what they're lacking here is a proper, what's called an ecclesiology. There we go. Or just an understanding of what that membership means and how it pertains to baptism in a profession of faith.

That's what I'm trying to get at.

Okay, gotcha. It just wasn't, it wasn't even close.

Anyway. So we understand that Romans 6, verses one through four says, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Baptism demonstrates I am dead to my sin and I'm alive in Christ. But what this pastor is saying is you can go through the little religious ritual and still continue in your sin as long as you've done, of course he's not, he doesn't consider homosexual desire as sin as we're gonna see from the sermon as we continue here.

In January of this year, I turned 60 and we marked my 25th anniversary as your pastor. Such milestones cause one to start thinking about the future. Priscilla and I are considering downsizing. I would appreciate your prayers there because we have radically different understandings of what to downsize means.

I also started to devote some of my thoughts to how I can finish strong in my ministry here and how the church can be best prepared for the future. This issue was not on my list. It was not on my list until a man asked me, will my family be welcomed in your church?

It's no longer an issue when it has a name and a face. It was not on my list until I realized that people who feel welcomed by others and who encounter God in worship will at some point seek out a small group Bible study and the next step in the natural progression of our outreach process is to consider church membership.

It was not on my list until I realized that at some point, I and the church could no longer operate on a silence is golden policy. It was not on my list until I came to the conviction that it would be better for the church to have faced the challenge now rather than kick it further down the road.

It was not on my list until I prayed and read and struggled and studied with what I had understood the Bible to say for most of my life. This is my journey. From the churches of my youth, the message was clear and simple, all homosexuals were sinners.

This was reinforced during college years with the message that the homosexual lifestyle was not appropriate for Christians, though I was starting to wonder why this particular sin garnered so much more condemnation than other sins.

Romans 1 and the Nature of Sexual Sin

So before we continue on and he starts talking about his journey, quote unquote journey through this subject, I think this is a good spot to talk about how the scripture does say that homosexuality is sin.

And a serious one. And a very serious sin on top of that. Yeah. Let me read here from Romans chapter one. So in Romans one, the apostle Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. We're talking about how God is evident and all that has been made. You can look at creation and you know there is a God who made it. Right. And no man has any excuse to say that there is no God.

We go on in verse 21. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to them, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. Verse 26. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness. So when Paul is talking about a fallen culture, a fallen civilization, the apex of their sin is unnatural desire. That's what he's demonstrating because when he goes on here, he'll start talking about other sins.

Covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, being haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

So indeed he goes on and on into these other sins but it's after he has spent such a huge bulk of space talking about how the height of human depravity is demonstrated in how people will feed their lustful appetites and God will turn them over to those appetites.

And they will burn with passion for one another and be destroyed in the lusts that they have for each other. And the last verse of Romans 1, 32 says this, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

And that's the scary passage as we consider the rest of this sermon that this pastor is giving approval to those who practice what God will judge.

So I found it interesting, claiming to be wise, they became fools because he's claiming to He's claiming to have this new wisdom. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I thought that was an interesting connection between his sermon and that verse.

In this passage we're reading here. Yeah.

So he's That's a little, I mean, that's a lot concerning. Don't get me wrong.

Very concerning, right. So why is it that homosexuality is such a serious sin? Because a culture that has been given over to its own depravity will demonstrate this sin, will embrace it and welcome it and consider it normal and natural.

And it is actually an evidence that God has given a culture over to a debased mind. Right. That's what it's actually showing. It's not that homosexuality is the greatest of sins that no one can therefore repent of.

Right, of course not. A person certainly can repent and be washed and cleansed and receive the Holy Spirit of God. Amen. And that's what must happen in a person when they become a Christian. Not that, you know, when we're asking this question, can a homosexual be a Christian?

Well, sure they can. But they repent of their sin and become a Christian. They don't continue in homosexuality and therefore call themselves a Christian, lest they be like the one that Paul talks about in Romans 6, who is still a slave to unrighteousness, submitting themselves to sin.

They're slaves to their own depravity. In 1 Corinthians 6, starting in verse 9, the Spirit says, "'Do you not know that the unrighteous "'will not inherit the kingdom of God? "'Do not be deceived. "'Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, "'nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, "'nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, "'nor revilers, nor swindlers "'will inherit the kingdom of God.'".

So there's more than just the sin of homosexuality that's mentioned there. These are all those that will be cast from the presence of God into hell at the final judgment. But then Paul goes on to say in verse 11, and again, he's talking to the church in Corinth and says to them, "'Such were some of you, but you were washed.

"'You were sanctified. "'You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ "'and by the Spirit of our God.'". When a person hears the gospel and they repent of their sin, they become a new creation.

The old is passed away and the new has come.

Experience, Women in Ministry, and Reading the Bible Through Jesus

In time, I met men and women who by no stretch of the imagination could have said to have chosen to be gay or lesbian. In fact, many of them raised in the church, tried to pray the gay away. Some endured harmful, damaging, reparative or conversion therapy.

Too many would choose acts of self-harm or suicide because no matter how much they loved God, the only message they heard was that they were an abomination. Over the years, I began to encounter gay men and lesbians who claimed to be followers of Jesus and who bore evidence of those professions in their lives.

And I was faced with a struggle between what I had always understood to be true and the lived realities of people. Ethicist David Gushy calls these transformative encounters.

So let me make perfectly plain here, Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Oh yeah. So as he's talking about people who lived their lives in homosexuality and they were called abominations, no, we all were that.

Oh yeah, definitely. Before you heard the message that God sent his son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins and he rose again from the grave and whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Until you heard that message and you turned from your sin and you believed in Christ, you were living in abominations. You were carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

That's Ephesians 2, 3. So we all were this way. It's not that these people who only do this sin are therefore an abomination. Right, that's ridiculous. Right, we all were that way. But he makes this statement in here about I met gays and lesbians who called themselves Christians and they even demonstrated the fruit of salvation in their life.

No, they didn't. And the fact that he didn't even understand the significance of a confession of faith and baptism at the very start of his sermon. Yeah. I can't imagine what he's implying when he says I met gay and lesbian people who called themselves Christians and from what I could tell they were.

Maybe they were just nice. I guess, I don't even know how he's trying to define that.

I don't either, I need more information.

Well, he's gonna go into some rather cliche arguments. I'm sure you've heard before. Awesome.

That's what's coming up next. Let me step aside for a minute. My home church taught that women were by God's design subordinate, weaker, inferior to men and could therefore have no role in church leadership.

When I was in high school and we were without a minister of music, the lady with a master's degree could sing a solo and conduct a choir but couldn't turn around and lead the congregation in worship. It didn't seem quite right to the 18-year-old me but the Bible was clear about the role of women in the home, in the church.

Until in my college church, I worked with Eleanor Ann Harwell, our minister of music and a darn good one. I realized that women could indeed be called to ministry by God and gifted by God for service to the church.

I had to go back and read my Bible again in light of this new reality.

So now he's talking about interpreting scripture based on his experiences rather than truly understanding what scripture says and then using that to be the lens through which he looks at the world.

Yeah, he's kind of taken his worldview to the Bible to like decipher it through that. Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah. Instead of having his worldview shaped by scripture. So he doesn't, again, he's so mixed up on ecclesiology, he doesn't even understand the role of men and women in the church. And God does have specific roles for men and specific roles for women.

And it might not seem right to an 18-year-old or a baby in the faith, if you will. Right. Because there's a lot to learn from the Bible and that's where you need to start.

Yes, I will say though, even my 11-year-old understands some of these concepts that he's saying he's having trouble with. She understands those things better than he does. Just because a woman can't be a pastor doesn't mean she doesn't have a ministry in the church.

This journey into the scripture has taken me at 60 to look again at the Bible. I need to tell you that I am Christocentric in my faith. I'm a follower of Jesus and I'm Christocentric in how I read the Bible.

I read it through the lens of Jesus.

Yeah, he's just said that now his experiences are changing the way that he's reading the Bible. And yet he wants to make this established claim of, now I'm Christ-centric and I interpret all things through the lens of Christ.

No, you just said you don't. You just said, you're now taking your personal experiences and judging the Bible based on those experiences rather than using scripture to guide your worldview.

The Bible has not changed. It hasn't, right. It has stayed the same. He's gonna make that claim too. Okay, then why on earth is his stance on everything like to and fro, going where the wind blows him?

Because he's saying it, but he doesn't believe it. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't believe in the sufficiency of scripture. Exactly. As Paul Washer has said, if you don't believe that scripture is sufficient, then whatever else you have to say about scripture doesn't matter.

Yep, nope.

The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message Statement, which serves as our doctrinal statement, says it this way in article one on the scriptures. The criteria through which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.

So he mentions there that they follow the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message, not the updated version, the BFM 2000. Okay. And in the 1963 version, it does not specify that pastors are to be only men. But in the BFM 2000, it does say, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

And it was because of the conservative resurgence that that phrase was added to the BFM 2000. Oh, okay. Clarifying that pastor is supposed to be only a man. And that, of course, I mean, that's scriptural.

That comes out of 1st Timothy chapter two and 1st Corinthians chapter 14, as well as being an order of creation.

Yeah, and I imagine back in 63, that that was not even thought of at that time. As being necessary. Yes. To add that phrase, probably not.

But on the family, now this is the Baptist Faith and Message 1963. This is what it says on the family. Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman and in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God's unique gift to provide for the man and the woman in marriage, the framework for intimate companionship, the channel for sexual expression according to biblical standards and the means for procreation of the human race.

So he's quoting from their own statement of faith, but their statement of faith condemns what he's telling his church to embrace. That's interesting.

Last week, last half of the week, we were over in Virginia with Thomas for his graduation from OCS. And Andrew and I and my friend Howard went into DC to play tourist. At the end of the day, we came to the Jefferson Memorial.

And Andrew pointed out this quote to me from Jefferson. I'm not an advocate for frequent change in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind that becomes more developed and enlightened.

As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man still wear the coat which fitted him as a boy as a civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

So what he's advocating for here and using Thomas Jefferson to advocate for it. Thomas Jefferson who created the Jefferson Bible who cut the parts of the Bible out he didn't like. Oh, okay, okay. I'm following now, I'm tracking.

Yeah, so that's kind of ironic, but he's advocating for progressivism. Like we're making progress here. So we need to change with progress.

So the Bible is an error or not an error. Yeah, it's errant.

Errant, there we go, that's the word.

Basically what he would be arguing for without using that word because he knows. Oh, that's a trigger word. Right, he knows exactly what that would mean. He obviously knows his words. Yes, he knows how to.

I'm not a journey.

Yeah. I'm Christ centric. Yeah. You know, all these. All the buzzwords. Yes, buzzwords, yeah.

Progressive theology though is not progress. It's just the opposite. As Cornelius Van Til wrote in his systematic theology, he said, creedal revision that tones down the specific and exact teachings of scripture to vague generalities is worse than useless.

It's retrogressive. Oh, wow. So it's not just neutral. It actually is damning. Okay. So we're going on here as again, the cliche kind of arguments he's gonna make will get worse. Awesome.

There have been numerous other times when Christians in the church thought we had a handle on the clear teachings of scripture. The divine right of Kings was mandated by scripture. Slavery was commended by scripture.

In fact, the Southern Baptist convention was founded to preserve the rights of slave owners to be appointed as missionaries and still be slave owners. The Bible was a primary text to support white supremacy and institutional racism in the South.

He's absolutely right in saying that the Southern Baptist convention as a denomination started so that missionaries could still hold slaves. Oh. Which I think you can recognize the problem with going to a people in another part of the globe and saying, you can be free in Christ.

And oh, by the way, I own slaves back in the US. Yeah. Yeah, there was a big problem. Slavery was the reason why the Southern Baptist denomination came to be. We've repented of that. Of course, it doesn't exist in the denomination anymore.

But then when he goes into talking about critical race, well, he borrows terms that come straight out of critical race theory, and that's white supremacy and institutional racism. Those terms did not exist in the 1800s.

Right, not at all. It was racist. It was a people mistreating another people. It was evil. It was. And praise God that the Southern Baptist convention has repented of that. Amen. And we can look back and see how the Lord has worked in the denomination to bring us to a place where we understand that all are equal and one in Christ Jesus.

Amen. The trouble with this little attempt at a history lesson that he's doing here is he's now gonna use this to say, and we're treating homosexuals the same way we were treating slaves 200 years ago.

No. We're being inhumane to them to therefore try to justify the homosexual movement.

How is it inhumane to love someone enough to tell them they're sinning?

Right, as Paul said to the Galatians, have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Right. We're not talking about something that's an immutable characteristic like race. We're talking about somebody who is willfully choosing to sin.

The Bible spoke clearly that women were not to be leaders in the church. In fact, they were to remain silent. The Bible was also clear about the sinfulness of divorce and remarriage, and even about drinking alcohol until Baptists started getting divorced and started drinking together.

The Bible never changed, but the context led believers to new understandings of the Scripture. Now forgive me, but I'm gonna try to do in about a minute what Jeremy covered in a two-hour presentation with our deacons this past Thursday.

The lead story in this whole conversation goes back to Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. The problem is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah really isn't about gay sex at all. It says all the men in the city confronted them.

Please tell me really every man in the city was a homosexual? They demanded that Lot surrender his guests for what was essentially intended to be gang rape, to degrade and humiliate these outsiders. Even conservative scholars today don't see this as a reference, a good starting point for the conversation about homosexuality.

In fact, none of the other references to Sodom when it's brought up refer to sexuality at all. There are other things pointed out about Sodom. Yeah.

What in the world? I don't know where he's getting his information.

He makes this statement about nowhere else that Sodom and Gomorrah reference. Is there any other reference to sexual immorality at all. All the time. Jude 1, 7, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Hang on, didn't you say he was reading a different Bible that like cut out a whole bunch of stuff? Yeah. Maybe that's the problem. His own version of the Bible.

Yeah. He's cutting out all these passages. He just makes this absolutely ignorant statement there.

That's the problem with not reading it in context, not keeping it together.

He just doesn't know the Bible. He doesn't. How did this man, how did he graduate from seminary? And he That's really sad. He did, by the way. This is his bio on the page. Coming to Townview in 1994, Jim has served as a faithful pastor, mentor, and friend.

He has previously pastored at Garden Lakes Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia, and Shively Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Jim is also a graduate of Shorter College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

How? Wow. Does the guy not even read his Bible during the week to make statements that ignorant?

I don't know, I'm baffled. Leviticus 18 and 20 are addressing how the Israelites are to be distinctive from their pagan neighbors. A man having sexual relations with a man as with a woman is degrading because the subordinate participant is being treated as a woman.

Other Levitical prohibitions, by the way, include planting your field with two different kinds of seed, clothing woven with two kinds of fabric, I hope nobody's wearing something blended today, rare steak, you can't eat meat with blood in it, cutting your hair at the sides of your head or trimming your beard, and of course, no more shrimp, lobster, catfish, oysters, or pork, all are forbidden.

Now, if you don't mind,.

I'm not going to address all of that. I've got what videos that have confronted all of that before? I was gonna say. Yeah, he is, the atheists are applauding right now. They're going, yes! Yeah. That's exactly the same arguments we've been making.

The New Testament passages from Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy, and a couple of others are notoriously difficult to translate and could be more easily understood against our cultural backdrop of male prostitution, sexual orgies as part of idol worship, out of control sexual desires, and exploitive sex with younger males.

So here he's taking passages.

We've already read to demonstrate how Scripture clearly states that homosexuality is sin. And now he's going, we can't really understand what those texts mean. Oh. And he thinks that the culture influenced Paul to write those texts that way, but he can't see how the culture is influencing him to interpret the text that way.

Right.

All Scripture is God-breathed. Absolutely. How are you gonna say that he was just doing it for the culture?

He doesn't see that the culture, our current culture has influenced him to interpret Scripture a different way than it was written. But instead he's blaming the Scripture. Oh yeah, see, 2000 years ago, they were being influenced by the culture to say that homosexuality is sin, but it's not really sin.

Where in the world is his basis for truth? That's a good question. What is the standard if it's not going to be God's word?

31 ,102 verses in the English Bible. And here we are with six brief references. Who doesn't weigh in on the issue?

Jesus. Matthew 19, four. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, male and female, hold fast to his wife, male and female, and the two, male and female, shall become one flesh.