Special Friday Dividing Line with Michael Brown

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:37

And welcome to The Dividing Line, a special Friday edition of the program today. I want to get right into it because this hour is going to go by way, way, way too quickly.

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As you all know, we have been seeking to stand for truth and righteousness and biblical integrity in many areas.

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We certainly don't claim to be experts in everything, but certainly one subject that I have dealt with many times over the years is the subject of homosexuality.

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A number of years ago now, well actually what, 2011, 2012, somewhere around there, Michael Brown put out a book called

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A Queer Thing Happened to America. When I first saw the cover, I was like, ah, oh, and, but it worked real well.

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And I remember I've, I've read the book a number of times and one of the thoughts across my mind as I read it, as I said, you know, this and the same sex controversy go together really, really well because of the fact that we're addressing the, the biblical aspects and topics like that.

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But I knew eventually that Michael would get around to writing his own book on the subject.

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He has done that now with Can You Be Gay? And Christian, there's the book and Michael Brown joins us today via Skype.

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Let's hope this all is going to work. Michael, thank you for being with us. And hopefully this is working well.

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And from what I can tell from my picture, my mustache is even more prominent than normal, which should be a great blessing to all of, all of the viewers.

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Well, let's just say, brother, I think you have a Jewish background. You, you know,

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I actually get persecuted for the mustache in some circles, but that's another story. Now you've already done your, did you do your program today?

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Yes, I did. And about six interviews, a whole lot of stuff stirring, but yeah,

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I did my, my program and finished that about three hours ago. Okay. All right. So you've had a busy day.

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You've got, you're traveling again. Where are you? Are you heading back to India? Where are you going again? No, Israel.

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Israel. It starts in I. Yeah. India is in December, but Israel is on Monday.

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I'll be leaving for Israel, so can't wait to get over there. And we've got a tour group going for the first time, so that'll be, that'll be kind of special.

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Well, you have more frequent flyer miles than I do, which is saying a lot, I would imagine. But after a while you get used to those 10, 8, 10, 14 hour trips, whatever it is that we do and we travel around.

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My next long one is to South Africa again. But anyway, your book, I got to read it before it came out, sort of.

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I mentioned to you the PDF just did not want to render appropriately into MP3. So I got the

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Kindle edition and worked through it. And let me just start off by asking you, look, we both have dealt with these very same issues for years.

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Do you get tired of having to go over the same material over and over again? Well, sometimes you get tired of it because it's so basic.

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It's so plain. This is not one of these rocket science kind of issues. But on the flip side, because people are genuinely confused, because a lot of people are struggling with these issues, because there's a lot of emotion involved, and these are people's lives at stake.

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On that level, I don't get tired of it. And it's one of these things now that is shouting to us everywhere.

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It's really unavoidable, denominations dividing over it, ministries dividing over it.

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So we cannot go on in scriptural ignorance. We really have to see, is the Word of God as plain and clear on this as we've always believed?

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If so, what do we say to those who are struggling with same -sex attraction? What is the gospel answer?

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So in that situation, because lives are at stake, it doesn't get old. But in terms of the information, when you have to answer the same thing in Leviticus, and people will come to you as if they've made this amazing new discovery, that gets a little frustrating sometimes.

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Yeah, yeah. It does. Now, look, you told a story in the book about what drew your attention to this subject.

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I mean, it's sort of like me. I don't think anyone just wakes up one morning and goes, you know what,

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I think I'm going to start doing apologetics in regards to the area of homosexuality.

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I mean, something has to happen to prompt that. What got you started in this area?

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Well, here's what happened. I've taught and preached for years about sexual purity, but always from a heterosexual perspective.

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I've been concerned about the breakdown in marriage. I've been concerned about sexual sin in the church. So when

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I focused on those kind of issues up until around 2004, so for decades before that, that was what

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I focused on. And if folks will read my first 19 books and take out every reference to homosexuality or homosexual practice and put them on one page, maybe it'll fill a page, maybe a page and a half.

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Just was not a focus. What got my attention beginning in 2004 was homosexual activism, gay pride event in Charlotte that was marked by all kinds of vulgarities and lewdness.

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And if it was a heterosexual event in a park, it would have been just as ugly, just as wrong. That began to get my attention, the aggressive agenda in politics, in schools, in the media.

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And I began to see how gay activism really was the principal threat to freedom of religion, speech and conscience in America.

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But for me, if I'm going to engage in an issue on a serious level, I need to understand it from the other person's viewpoint.

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Just as when you want to learn about Islam, you didn't just read apologetics against Islam. You went to the primary sources, you learned

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Arabic to read the Quran and the traditions and so on. So I began to read literature written by gay activists.

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I began to read books that were written by professing gay Christians. And my heart began to break for the people.

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I began to be terribly burdened for the people. I would go out of my way to listen to someone's story so they could tell me their story or I could read it.

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And James literally, God as my witness, there were times when I'd put a book down reading the story and just get alone in my room and just cry for a while and pray because I felt so burdened for the people.

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So even though I knew this is the last subject you want to tackle because you will be vilified, you'll be mocked in the ugliest ways, you'll be called a closeted homosexual, a hate monger, a bigot, a homophobe, and everything else.

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And kind of the worst of the worst will come out attacking you. I knew we had to stand for this culturally.

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And I also knew the church needed to do a better job because either we ignore the subject entirely or when someone comes to faith who deals with these issues, we try to instantly convert them into heterosexual and we think that's the solution.

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Or we just demonize everyone and think that someone who identifies as LGBT and comes to our church building and wants help, we think there's some gay activist.

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And so we really need to come to this with grace and truth mingled together.

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And I believe it's easily done if we'll open our hearts to God and his word. Now what you just mentioned right there reminds me of what

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I've tried to do in speaking on the subject of Islam is to recognize that there are all sorts of different kinds of Muslims.

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And you make the point in the book there are all sorts of different kinds of people who identify as homosexuals.

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You do have incredibly aggressive individuals who do want to end our freedoms.

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And then you've got other people that could care less about any of that stuff. They just want to live their lives.

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They don't want to be involved in any of all that stuff. And you've got all sorts of people in between and everything else.

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It's very difficult to get, and this term, I don't even know what it means anymore to be perfectly honest with you, especially since everybody on the

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Pathios video yesterday called themselves evangelicals, which means I have no idea what that word means anymore.

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But it's difficult to get evangelicals to make those differentiations between these people.

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And especially when what we are hearing all the time are the people that are trying to restrict our freedoms, that are trying to, well,

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I think of the phone call you got on the line of fire just a couple of weeks ago.

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I forget what date it was. I caught up on Saturday, I think, listening to a couple of programs. And you had a caller that clearly has major spiritual issues involved in just being utterly incapable of rational dialogue with you on the content of your book.

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And in describing your book, I had read it, and I'm like, what planet are you coming from?

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And so we see much more of that. So it's very hard to get evangelicals to recognize and hence to want to even engage in conversation with a lot of these folks.

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Right. And here's the other side to it. We're dealing with the activists. We're dealing with the ones that want to take us to court.

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We're dealing with the ones who came out of the closet and want to put us in the closet. But now you'll have the so -called progressive

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Christians and the ones that I would say really don't deserve the title evangelical in terms of its historic meaning any longer.

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But they're talking to someone who's coming to their church, two men who identify as homosexual, and they say, we love the

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Lord and they serve and they help. And they're the nicest guys around. And they've just taken in a handicapped child.

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And and here they think, what's with this Mike Brown? He's angry. He's just attacking other people.

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He's hurting these people in our church. Someone, another professing evangelical, said that I'm that I'm now the what is it, the angry father figure of Christianity in America.

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And so they're projecting things, they're seeing things, they're projecting things. So what we really need to do, and you and I both understand this, we need to get quiet before God and open his word and say,

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God, what are you saying? Because I still do not believe that anyone could come to the scriptures and without a bias, without a preconception, without some agenda, without some family member that has come out as gay, that could come to the scripture and just say,

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OK, God, what do you have to say about this? And come away saying God affirms committed same sex relationships.

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I just don't see how it can happen. I understand how we could differ on different doctrinal issues and people can read the word and come to one conclusion or another conclusion on many things that that we might differ on that are secondary.

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But something like this, you have to have some glasses that you put on that color your reading of scripture before you can question what is the clear testimony of the entire

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Bible consistently and without contradiction. Now, obviously, was it your intention to basically, you know what you've written in A Queer Thing Happened in America?

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And by the way, given that that book is so focused upon the cultural and social issues, any plans on expansion, update?

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I mean, given the electronic nature of things and I mean, just what has happened since you wrote it.

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Yes. Any any plans? I mean, that that could become almost like the Constitution, a living document.

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Right. Right. Well, I do want to I do want to update some parts, but I am planning on writing another book because I know that ultimately the gay revolution cannot succeed.

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I know that ultimately the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of family, the attack on gender, the the attack on religious freedoms and on and on it goes.

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This cannot succeed long term. It is so contrary to what God intended.

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So there'll be some updating, I believe. And then, of course, I'm writing articles constantly. But James, just what's happened this week,

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I could update it on an almost daily basis. And in fact, by the minute my good friends

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David and Jason Benham, twin brothers that were kicked off HGTV, they were going to have a reality

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TV show. HGTV knew that they were conservative Christians who were pro -life and pro -family.

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Well, what happens is right wing watch goes after them and HGTV immediately caves and says,

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OK, we're going to drop the program. Well, they've had massive media attention because of it have been great witnesses for the

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Lord. Now I get word. Just yesterday that SunTrust had dropped them as as realtors.

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They work with SunTrust around the country. They're realtors. Here's a bank. It's a foreclosure. And they say,

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OK, we need a realtor to list it. So they've worked with SunTrust for years and very, very successfully. They've got a great track record.

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Well, they find out yesterday they're being dumped by SunTrust and obviously SunTrust had a problem with them holding to biblical beliefs and biblical values.

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Well, the news got out this morning at five o 'clock Eastern Standard Time today. SunTrust reversed its decision because of the uproar.

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So, I mean, we have to I just posted on Facebook the bad news. And then I had to say, hey, there's good news.

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So that's what's happening in the culture. And for for pastors and leaders and Christians to think they can just avoid this, you can't know because your church is going to have to take a stand because you're going to be challenged about about performing a so -called wedding ceremony for a committed couple, or you're going to have someone that that, you know, a friend, a family member or someone in your congregation say, what do

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I do? My 15 year old kid just came out as gay. What do I do? My sister just told me she's lesbian.

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We need to be equipped. And this is not something that needs to catch us off guard or even throw us because God's word is true for everyone, the gospel is true for everyone.

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And God's words are ways of life. And if we can just step back and look at things honestly, simply, clearly,

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I think people will be able to come out of the fog and say, oh, it really is clear. And I guess

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I've been moved by emotions and relationships. The way I boiled it down is that one group starts with God and understands who

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God is and then says, what can I do to please him and fulfill his desires?

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The other group starts with self, understands who they are and then says, what can

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God do to please me and fulfill my desires? That's what it really comes down to.

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It really does. Now, I have I on the last program I did, I mentioned to the audience, in fact, just yesterday that.

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I really believe that if we are going to be Christians who are going to have an impact in our culture today, that the days of looking at things like the

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Holiness Code and leaving that to to Michael Brown and to the experts in Hebrew or looking at Romans one and leaving that to the

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New Testament scholars, those days are past. Anybody who wants to engage our society today has got to do the work to know, for example, the rich value of what is found in Leviticus 18 through 20, the commands to honor our parents and the elderly and all the positive stuff that's there, because so many people just get away with saying, well, you shouldn't touch pigskin or wear polyester.

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And they surface level arguments that we should be able to respond to just almost instantly because we know these texts so well, and yet that's not where the vast majority of believing

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Christians are, which is why the Matthew Vines books and and the Brownson books and and Helminiac and everybody else can can get where they're getting is because we don't know the background of these texts.

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It's time for everybody in the church to know what Parafusin means in Romans one and to know that just because Paul can use it about long hair over here doesn't mean he's not using it in a creation context in Romans one and all the rest that kind of stuff, which is what you're addressing here.

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You're not you're not doing saying things that have not been said before, but one of the things

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I really appreciate in what you have said in this book and in in on your program as well is that we've got to get past this idea which the the homosexual advocate advocacy people themselves are promoting is that there's only six verses in the

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Bible that we need to be worried about here. Right. Talk a little bit about about that and how you try to get around that in the book.

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Sure, I have a whole chapter called The Bible is a heterosexual book. And there was a great analogy that my friend

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Larry Tomczak used, author and cultural commentator. He said, let's say you have a cookbook and it's it's healthy dessert recipes.

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And in the introduction of the book, the author says healthy recipes are really important to me.

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And I don't believe in using sugar. So you will not find a single recipe with sugar in this book.

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If you're looking for sugar recipes, this is the wrong book to look for. So healthy recipes, no sugar.

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And now you read the rest of the book. And the word sugar does not occur a single time. Maybe you have an electronic version and you search and you say the word sugar only occurs five times in this entire book.

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Obviously, sugar is not important to the author. No, quite the opposite, quite the contrary.

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So here's where we start. We start with God creating male and female. We start with the woman is called woman isha because she's taken out of the man ish.

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That's why the two of them reunite and become one. And they are the only ones who can fulfill the divine mandate for couples to be fruitful and multiply.

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They're the only ones biologically capable of doing that. And then when you go through the entire Bible, every relationship that is a sanctioned relationship, a blessed relationship, a legislated relationship is a heterosexual relationship.

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Every family setting is a heterosexual family. Children honor your father and mother.

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When you get to the commands for husbands and wives, husbands love your wives, wives submit to your husbands.

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If you're a same sex couple reading that, you have to wonder who's the husband, who's the wife, because it's presupposing heterosexuality.

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The analogy of Christ and the church, every parable, every teaching, even the relationships that were in place for a period of time, but were never

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God's ideal polygamy and things like that. It's always the union of male and female.

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So when you have several references to possible terms negative and then the entire

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Bible heterosexual, the only possible conclusion to come to is that this is what

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God has ordained and this is what God has established. And there's really no two ways around it.

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So rather than deal with the so -called clobber passages first, I begin the book by trying to take the reader into the heart and mind of someone who identifies as LGBT.

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And it's really painful reading. I tell the stories in their own words. I quote the authors.

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I got permission in some cases to quote them extra so their words could be heard clearly and so that you feel the pain, you feel the weight of this and we go through love does no harm to its neighbor.

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And what the church teaches causes depression and suicide and hopelessness for gays and lesbians and drives them away.

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But when you affirm them in their homosexuality, now they thrive. I deal with that. I deal with the question, are we using the

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Bible to sanction anti -homosexual practice the same way we misuse the Bible to sanction slavery and segregation and the oppression of women?

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So I deal with larger issues. And then the Bible is a heterosexual book. And should judge or not to judge all those things before I even look at a single so -called clobber passage, because we have the whole testimony of Scripture.

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And a simple question for those who watch this, listen to this and and who are sure that God blesses committed monogamous same sex relationships.

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A simple question. The Bible's a big book. God is a compassionate God. He certainly saw that there would be people same sex attracted.

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How come there's not one example, one positive reference, even just a little bone that was thrown out to no nothing?

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It's because it's contrary to God's plan from beginning to end and never in the best interest of an individual or society.

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It isn't. And, you know, I one of the questions I would love to ask Matthew Vines and what

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I've I've mentioned Matthew Vines, I said, hey, you all are doing this Reformation Project thing in Washington, D .C.

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in November. Be happy to travel. I mean, talk about a training thing to have a debate right in the middle of your thing that that would be the best way to do this.

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But wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get Matthew Vines and Dr. Brownson?

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Yes. Because it seems really obvious to me what I'd ask. I'd ask one question,

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Matthew Vines, and that would be if you take Boswell, Brownson, Countryman, Scanzoni and Mallincott and Helminiac out of his sources, what is new in his argumentation?

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That's what I'd like to that's what I'd like to know, because I didn't see anything and Brownson seemed to be his primary scholarly source.

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But I would love to see an opportunity of engaging with them. And one of the questions I would ask Brownson, having read his book recently, is if you want to affirm the highest view of Christ.

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Then didn't Jesus know that three percent of the population approximately were this unknown kind of, you know, you've heard it, everybody says that the biblical writers didn't know about committed monogamous homosexual relationships.

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Didn't Jesus know? In fact, when you get a chance to listen to the Matthew Vines confab they had on Patheos yesterday,

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I think it was Tony Jones that made the statement. And even Vines was like, I don't want to agree with that.

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But he even made the statement, Jesus did not know about gay people.

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So who's Jesus, then? How do you maintain a high confession of who Jesus is and take these positions?

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It's one thing to say that Jesus was not familiar with the theory of relativity as formulated by Einstein, simply as as factual material, you know, that he's that he didn't know a language that had never been spoken in his humanity.

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Because that would, you know, that would just be like if you ask Jesus on the earth in his humanity, who's going to be the president of the

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United States in a certain year. Right. You know, obviously. But when you're talking about humanity, when you're talking about human needs, see, one thing that professing gay

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Christians have done is they've really pressed on the church the fact that that they're not marching down the street in a gay pride event in their underwear and they don't want to be sleeping with 10 new partners every month, that they value being committed and so on.

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And they want to be part of the church. And they're and they're telling us these things. So they're presenting us with with a passionate argument, with an emotional argument, with a caring argument.

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God didn't see them there through history. And God inspired the

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Bible to be written and all the different authors to write something that would be so oppressive and so deadly and so destructive to homosexual men and women through the ages.

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So only in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, only in the aftermath of the gay liberation movement, only in the aftermath of the assault on the authority of the word of God and new interpretations, which in the history of interpretation have never been found, only in the aftermath of all that is the sudden revelation that Paul and Jesus didn't know about, that some people by birth are attracted to the same sex.

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It's so bizarre and farfetched and speaks so poorly of God, both in terms of his foreknowledge and in terms of his compassion.

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It's mind boggling. And let's not forget that plenty of gay activists say something very different. They say

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Jesus absolutely knew about same sex relationships and he affirmed them. And he even gave a shout out in Matthew 19 when he was talking to eunuchs, which is the worst passage to use, because even if he was, even if he was including in eunuchs people who were same sex attracted and because they weren't attracted to the opposite sex, they were considered to be eunuchs.

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And he said they were born that way. Let's stretch it to the limit that the gay activists and gay theologians want to take it.

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He's talking about someone who was separated to God and abstains from marriage and sex for life. So it's not the passage that they want to use to back up vindicating same sex relationships.

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Yeah. I could tell in the book that you were going, guys, you really don't want to go to that one. Do you really realize what you're saying here?

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It was like I can just hear Michael starting to speak a little bit faster at that point, sort of like in some of his dialogues with Shmuley.

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He's just going to start going off here pretty soon. But it just obviously to me, and I don't know if you saw the the e -book response that Southern Seminary did to Matthew Vines that they released the same day.

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Yeah, Moller edited it. Yeah. I didn't go I didn't go through all of it, but I was thrilled to see that they got that out the same day.

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Yeah. Same day. One of the one of the things that the doctor Moller mentioned to me specifically was the fact that it is just so obvious that Matthew's book is dependent upon two things.

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First of all, as the book points out, he doesn't know how there's such a strong attack upon the concept of the complementary relationship of male and female in this book and and also in Brownson, but also it's just so obvious that the only possible conclusion you can come to if you accept this form of argumentation is becoming so prevalent amongst the homosexual advocates is that there is no there's no basis for affirming the sufficiency of scripture to really address anything in the modern world, because you you basically, as you have pointed out, you have this assertion that, well, let's use

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Jesus specifically. Here's Jesus. He can look into the very hearts of men. He knows what their motivations are.

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He in Mark chapter two, when he heals the man who's lowered down through the roof, he knows exactly what the scribes and Pharisees are thinking in their hearts and things like you mean he didn't know that there were some homosexuals around him as well?

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Of course he did. And he would have known all the arguments that they are making about how how they are naturally made this way and and the suffering that was there.

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And Jesus never said a word. Instead, he just repeated the standard

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Jewish understandings from the Old Testament of his day. How how do you put that together?

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It's a very, very compelling point to make, James, especially when he he is the one that is being pointed to in terms of what would

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Jesus do in terms of being affirming, in terms of being loving, in terms of love your neighbor as yourself, that he is all for all of us, the ultimate standard, the ultimate model, and for him to have been in that situation.

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And then you trickle down the same issue with Paul and inspiration of Scripture and how many have written things that were so wrong on the issue and made such wrong judgments.

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And of course, anti right now, there's a said there were plenty of committed homosexual relationships around in the ancient

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Greek world for Paul and others to observe. So they were hardly ignorant of these things. But for Jesus to not see the pain, for Jesus to not see the struggle, for Jesus to not see a

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Matthew Vines or a Justin Lee or others who are out there and see the pain in their heart and see the questions,

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God, you hate me. Did you make me like this to condemn me? Does this mean I'm damned? Are you consigning me to celibacy for the rest of my life?

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I want to serve you, but I don't know if you'll accept me. That he's there. He was around people like that and he never utters anything.

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Instead, he says he didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill. And then in the

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Sermon on the Mount, he takes the sexual ethic of the Torah, for example, adultery. He takes it to a higher level and says it's not just the act, but it's the heart.

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And then in Matthew 15, he uses in the Greek, as we have it, porneia in the plural, so all sexual acts outside of marriage.

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Of course, there was no debate about the definition of marriage any more than there was a debate about a human marrying an elephant.

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It was just not part of the conversation that that he says all sexual acts outside of marriage defile, make the person clean.

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And we know in Jewish culture of that day that homosexual acts were considered among the most sinful and vile because of so contrary to God's order in creation.

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And then in Matthew 19, he reaffirms from creation the joining of a man and woman together for life as God's intention for marriage.

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Once again, he could have said something if the activist argument is true.

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He had to have said something. If the love of God is real, there would have been something in Scripture and you wouldn't have to have people

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I was at a presentation years ago in Charlotte. I felt so bad for the people. It was it was a local pastor, gay pastor.

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He's since left the area. And he gave a presentation about what Scripture said and and he said, look,

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I can't be dogmatic about this, but you need to really study it and pray and think. And I said to myself, you're risking your life, your whole life.

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If you've given to this, the relationship you're in, you're teaching and preaching to others and you're not even sure.

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Look, you and I know there may be issues we can debate and differ on, but the fundamentals of the faith will die for in terms of our certainty.

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Now, God give us the grace. If it happened, if a gun was put to our head to deny Jesus, these things are as sure they're sure than the ground we're standing on.

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And for folks to many of them say, look, we can't really be dogmatic about this or sure or or even it's see it seems that Paul was speaking against pederasty or or or exploitive sexual relationships in First Corinthians six.

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It seems that means that you're really on uncertain ground. And one other point, because what you said is so profoundly important.

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You could say that, look, Islam did not exist in Jesus day. And certainly

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Jesus was not dealing with a God fearing Muslim when he uttered John 14, six.

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And look, Judaism had not broken away from from recognizing him as Messiah. I mean, this is a development over a century.

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So so he was he was in thinking about that devout Orthodox rabbi when he said no one can come to the father except through me and on and on it goes no more sufficiency of Scripture and no more true

32:17

God in the flesh, Jesus. Yeah, no more application of scriptural norms to, well, to any culture that we might be in anymore.

32:23

It's just we have no guidance anymore. We have no direction. And what I appreciate about what the

32:30

Southern Seminary and Dr. Moeller said is this is a gospel issue. This is a gospel issue.

32:36

And so many people are separating it from the gospel. But the reality is, if we cannot define what sin is, if we are so if if what was universally understood to be a a a complete violation of of God's will in regards to his law, his creative decree concerning mankind and male and female and everything else, if if we can't even define that, then we really have no grounds upon which to preach the cross.

33:09

We have no grounds upon which to speak of the necessity of the death of Christ. We really can cannot affirm any longer the idea that there is only one savior.

33:19

There is only one way it's a gospel issue. And yet you and I both know that unless God grants repentance, we are going to be in a very small minority in a in a not too distant future in this culture because it is moving that quickly.

33:36

And Christians who don't have a worldview that recognizes the relationship of the gospel, the authority of the word, to the church, to social issues that they've they've pigeonholed all that stuff.

33:48

They're not connected to one another. They will just pigeonhole this over there someplace, not realizing in the process they have completely undercut the entire basis of a an authoritative proclamation of the gospel to our culture.

34:01

And here's what we have to see. We understand the foundational nature of marriage in a society.

34:08

We understand the institution of marriage and moms and dads raising kids, the bedrock, the foundation of human civilization.

34:17

Well, as we redefine marriage, everything gets wacky.

34:24

For example, in England, they have now decided that they're overruling centuries of English usage and the

34:31

Oxford Dictionary of English religion of English language. And they now say that a husband can refer to a woman in a same sex relationship and a wife can refer to a man.

34:45

Oh, it gets worse than this. California, just a few days ago, the assembly bill passed,

34:52

I think, by a vote of 51 to 13. You want to talk about cultural madness, that two lesbians filling out a birth certificate for their child, the child of one of them, obviously, it can designate one is the mother and the other is the father, the same with homosexual men.

35:08

Theoretically, both of the lesbians could be the fathers. But let's say there's a little sanity. So you've got the mother and now, quote, the father.

35:14

So you have female husbands. You have male wives. You have female fathers.

35:21

You have male mothers. Now we have throuples. We have three people coming together.

35:27

Three lesbians said they got married. They wore traditional wedding gowns. The fathers walked two of them to the fathers, walked them down the aisle.

35:36

You have throuples. And now one of them is going to have a kid. They're going to homeschool the kid. And it keeps getting more and more absurd.

35:45

And, you know, I wrote a little poem about it. I'm not willing to share it publicly yet. But but just just the absurdity of where the thing ultimately goes.

35:55

And on that level, it quickly begins to destroy itself. For example, people want to be tolerant.

36:03

They want to be accepting. And here's someone saying, look, I'm really struggling. I'm a man. Look, I'm a man.

36:10

I know I'm in a woman's body, but I'm really a man. And they go on with this and they're tormented. And now they feel so much better dressing as the opposite gender and hormone treatment.

36:20

Oh, I finally feel like who I really am. You want to be compassionate. But come on. Who signed up for boys in the

36:27

Girl Scouts? Who signed up for a man who identifies as a woman using a locker room, a college and high school locker room by the pool?

36:37

And the police are called in because the man excuse me, the woman is exposing her male genitalia in the shower, in the sauna.

36:46

And little kids are freaking out or teenagers are freaking out. The school says, well, we can't do anything because we can't discriminate against transgenders.

36:53

And now it's the law in California that not only does the kid use the bathroom of their gender identity choice, doesn't matter what it does to all the other kids in the bathroom, but they can play on the sports team.

37:04

They identify with. So there's a 17 year old boy who's on the girls softball team and uses the girls locker room.

37:12

I mean, you want to have the best girls basketball team in the country. You get a 17 year old guy, a stud athlete who really believes he's a woman to the core of his being.

37:22

And he's going to play on the girls team. People start to realize this is societal madness.

37:28

And I've appealed. I've spoken plainly in articles to the Rob Bells and the

37:34

Jim Wallaces and the Rachel Held Evans, who are all at different levels of being so -called progressive

37:39

Christians and to some level would still want to be identified as evangelicals. There's a massive elephant in the room you're missing.

37:47

While you want to be compassionate to your gay friend or gay neighbor and ultimately you're doing more harm than good to that person as well.

37:54

But you're missing the transformation of society in a negative and destructive way. And that's why people think, well, we don't want to get involved in political issues.

38:04

Well, of course, we criticize those who did nothing during times of slavery. And and and we stand by when fifty five million babies are aborted and now human trafficking is a crisis level in America.

38:16

Oh, so we just don't get involved with social issues because it's not preaching the cross. No, we've got to be holistic and recognize that that the goal of the

38:25

Great Commission is to make disciples. The question is, how do we now live as disciples in the world? And of course, we must be the conscience of the society.

38:34

And right now it's it's it's really time. My latest article, Let the Separation Come. It's really time to find out who's who, what's what, who really will bow down before the

38:44

God of the Bible and who will recreate the God of the Bible in the image of their own sexuality or those they identify with.

38:51

Well, it's definitely coming now. Time's going by real quick and we haven't gotten into a couple of the key issues

38:56

I want to get you to get to. But before we do that, I did want to take the opportunity since you're on one of the questions that keeps running through my mind.

39:05

And if I recall correctly, correct me if I'm wrong. I think you did address this in a queer thing happened to America.

39:11

But it just strikes me that when I listen to all of these, quote, unquote, progressives, they use

39:20

LGBT, what, QI. I've it's the majority of the alphabet anymore.

39:26

So I've I've lost track after LGBTQ. But I never really hear much about the

39:34

B, especially when it comes to this issue of marriage equality, because didn't you?

39:42

Did you did you not address what seems obvious to me? Maybe this is where I heard it first. I thought about first. I don't know. But if you really are bisexual, then the only meaningful marriage relationship for you cannot be a monogamous relationship with one person.

39:59

It has to be. What's the term you used? A thruple, a thruple. Yeah. Or here's the thing.

40:06

The bisexual might say, look, I'm attracted to a to a person, not a gender. I've read that from some lesbian women.

40:13

I'm attracted to a person, not a gender. Some are bisexual. Well, we could go either way. If it's about fulfilling my attractions and desires, then perhaps for this season of life, for several years,

40:25

I'm primarily attracted to a woman. But I might meet a man that I'm attracted to. And since God is here to fulfill my desires and to bless me with the fulfillment of my attractions, then absolutely there should be at least some clause, if not for a thruple, then then at least for a temporary romance relationship with with another person.

40:48

Otherwise, some part of my bisexuality I have to deny. And the one thing we know about progressive

40:54

Christianity when it comes to sexual orientation issues is thou shalt not deny thyself.

41:00

Right. I mean, that's that's kind of the commandment. So there is that inconsistency. And shouldn't that person have the right?

41:07

But also the term marriage equality is completely ambiguous. I've asked people,

41:12

OK, marriage equality. How do you feel about polygamy? No, no, that's wrong. Well, how do you feel about two brothers? That's gross.

41:18

Well, so so it's really not marriage. Excuse me. Let me do let me do a a Piers Morgan for you.

41:24

That's silly. Yeah, exactly. And here's what's interesting. There is the marriage equality blog spot, and it advocates for full marriage equality.

41:37

And they say any consenting adults, any consenting any number, no matter what relationship, any number, no matter what relationship, as long as it's consensual.

41:48

It doesn't matter the configuration of male, female. It doesn't matter the number. And it doesn't matter the relationship.

41:54

Otherwise, it is not marriage equality. At least they're consistent, very inconsistent. If love is love, as our president tweeted it out when the

42:02

Supreme Court sadly overturned DOMA last year. If love is love, then let love be.

42:08

And don't try to quench it. No two ways about it. Now, let's let's let's in the last about 16 minutes or so we've got here.

42:16

Let's let's talk a little bit about obviously you spent a lot of time in the book.

42:22

We need to dealing with the key issues. Now, obviously, you're a special area of expertise for you is going to be focusing upon the utilization of the terminology in the

42:35

Old Testament in regards to especially one of the buzzwords that people need to understand.

42:42

And that is the term to evap. We I think if I recall correctly, did you reproduce the entirety of the of the

42:52

Dr. Laura letter in the book? Yes, I did. That and queer thing happened to America.

42:58

And and I make reference to it again in can you be gay and Christian? Exactly. And the thing that's so funny to me is that you're

43:08

I would dare say perhaps the majority of evangelical Christian pastors would not be able to immediately categorically answer the

43:19

Dr. Laura letter. I agree. I agree. Complex. By the way, just an aside, we could both go off on this.

43:27

I got one hundred twenty five plus page catalog containing new books from five major Christian publishers.

43:35

And I would say the bulk of it was fictional novels and romance novels. And next on the list was self -help kind of stuff and a tiny core of serious theology and biblical interpretation.

43:48

I thought, no wonder we're confused on these other issues. There's no question about it. There's no question about it.

43:53

And it's look, it's not a pleasant subject to be addressing. I mean, I think of my my parents, my grandparents generation.

43:59

And this was something you talked about in the public. So we're behind the curve on that.

44:05

But especially when it comes to the the the Tanakh, we look, the church just isn't prepared to meaningfully deal with these issues.

44:15

That's just all there is to it. There's just so much ignorance. And I've I've said over and over again, the evangelical church in the

44:22

United States is canonically challenged. There is, in essence, a hierarchy in our canon.

44:30

I think John's right at the top. Romans is up there. Revelations up there. Hebrews.

44:36

Yeah, it's too much Old Testament in that. And the Old Testament serves to provide flannel graph stories for the kids.

44:45

But honestly, in many people's thinking, it's it's not Paul's view that all scripture is the

44:51

Anastos. It is a it's a secondary canon. As a result, if anyone does, you know, just show themselves to be super spiritual by actually reading through Leviticus once, they'll consider that that was good enough.

45:04

And I don't need to do anything more from that. So to have a background from which to even speak about what abomination means or to put it in a proper context or to recognize abomination in regards to moral issues versus ceremonial issues and the use of the term.

45:21

We're on a look. We've got an uphill battle. Got it. Yeah, we do. The good news is the scriptures are so clear on this that it's hard to deny and get away from.

45:31

I always find it ironic that that gay activists will attack me or their colleagues will attack me and say, you have no right to address issues of sexuality because your

45:43

Ph .D. is in Semitic languages and your scholarship is in the Bible. You have no right to talk about same sex attraction.

45:50

You have no right to talk about cultural issues. Well, then I say, OK, so you do believe what I say about the

45:56

Bible, right? Oh, no, you're just a bigoted homophobe. So so much so much for that.

46:01

But when it comes to Leviticus, let's set the record straight on a few things. The term to Eva abomination, that which is detestable, is also related to the verb of meaning to detest something.

46:15

And many of the things that are spoken of in terms of that which is to be detested are clearly moral in in in scope and intent, including things that are listed within the

46:26

Torah. Now, here's what's fascinating. We always hear, well, there were so many abominations, so many toy vote in Leviticus.

46:33

Why do you single out one? Well, actually, only one in the book of Leviticus is singled out as to Eva something detestable or abominable.

46:43

And that is Leviticus 18, 22, a man to lie with a man. Now, here's what's so fascinating.

46:49

This is also the section that gives the prohibitions against incest. If we throw that out and I say to you, on what biblical basis should we prohibit incest?

47:00

On what biblical basis is it wrong? We've also had to throw that out. That's a problem.

47:06

Then we look at the whole chapter and we see Leviticus 18 says to Israel, don't do what the pagan nations do.

47:14

Don't do what the Egyptians and the Canaanites do. Because of that, they're vomited out of the land because of that judgment has come upon them.

47:23

So God's saying don't do what the pagans do, because this is bad for the pagans. In other words, this is a universal moral prohibition.

47:30

And then they are summed up in the plural as to a vote, a lot on incest and then adultery and then bestiality and then homosexual practice.

47:41

People say, yeah, but it also references a man having sexual relations with his wife during her monthly period.

47:46

Well, there's no death penalty for that in Leviticus 20. And it is mentioned. It's not repeated in the

47:52

New Testament. But I have no problem saying, fine, I've got an argument. If that's your argument, fine.

47:58

I'm not arguing that point. But but here's the bigger thing. Leviticus singles out as something detestable, homosexual practice, and then has the death penalty associated.

48:09

Now, of course, this was under a theocracy. This is Israelite law. This is not what we're speaking of or advocating today.

48:16

But it was that serious. So soundbite, simple answer.

48:21

God gave certain laws to Israel to keep them separate from the nations, like food laws, of which he said, these foods are detestable to you.

48:31

And then there are laws that he gave Israel that were universal moral prohibitions like don't murder and don't steal and don't commit adultery.

48:40

And sexual relations between two males is one of those universal moral prohibitions.

48:46

If it was wrong for the Egyptians and the Canaanites, you better believe it's wrong for a devoted follower of Jesus.

48:51

Well, let's emphasize a couple of things. First of all, before I forget it, what you mentioned about the the land spewing them out.

49:00

We went through that a little bit quickly. And I'm not sure that people caught the relevance of that. What you're saying is that there is a clear indication in the text that there are behaviors on the part of the non covenant people.

49:15

The people are not a part of Israel and not they're not in covenant with God in the sense of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and so on and so forth.

49:23

And yet their behavior is of such a nature that there is a natural revulsion of the created order.

49:33

So the land spews them out. There's there's almost a picture there of the natural order knowing what is right and wrong, whereas man does not.

49:43

And there is a reaction against that. That's something that I think people need to catch and understand.

49:50

And that is not just mentioned once. It's mentioned a number of times in in the Pentateuch and in Joshua, as in relationship to God's wrath coming upon these nations and the extent of the destruction that is commanded of the people of Israel in regards to these nations,

50:07

I think it needs to be emphasized. Yes. And look, there are certain things that bring blessing and certain things that bring destruction in their wake.

50:16

Let's just say if the whole nation of America became alcoholics, you know, that's the end of our civilization.

50:24

If the whole nation of America became rapists, well, you know, that's the end of our civilization.

50:31

Well, we see the deterioration. Just look, look on the heterosexual level in general, the massive amount of cohabitation, the massive amount of kids born out of wedlock, the massive amount of kids who are fatherless with the societal consequences, the massive amount of no fault divorce, the massive amount of pornography addiction and on and on.

50:51

All these things have a terribly deteriorating effect on human society, and then you factor in divine judgment.

50:59

Numbers 35 bloodshed pollutes the land and you see the effect of violence on a culture and how the land ultimately revolts against that, metaphorically speaking.

51:11

So it's the same way with these other issues. And when I see now and I haven't seen the shows, but read the reports that incestuous relationships are celebrated on series like Game of Thrones, apparently famous books and now

51:26

TV series and and other things like this. When I see this being celebrated more and more, where I see people saying, well, hey, if it's consensual, what's the big deal?

51:35

This is just another taboo. Time magazine 2007 asked, should incest be made legal now in America?

51:43

And on and on it goes. You realize, oh, OK, this is this is a serious level of deterioration.

51:49

Is it any surprise that it's against this backdrop with the deterioration of marriage, family, massive sexual promiscuity, reality

51:58

TV shows on teen moms and on and on? It's against this backdrop that people are now, quote, discovering that homosexual practice is acceptable in God's sight in certain context and discovering new insights into scripture that somehow we were just never really smart enough to get to before.

52:15

While we're still in Leviticus, in fact, I have it up on on Accordance right now. I want to I want to point something out and get your comments on it as well, because you did address this when we look at the

52:28

Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18, 22, Kymata arsinos u koime theise koitain gunaikos delugma gar esten.

52:41

The phrase, the terms arsinos and koime theise koitain are right there in the

52:50

Greek Septuagint. Now, what's important about this, of course, is that this lies in the background of Paul's utilization of another term in the

53:03

New Testament, arsino koitais. There is there are people who try to assert that we don't really know what these words mean.

53:15

And yet to anyone who has done Pauline studies and knows the well, just the basic centrality of the

53:26

Greek Septuagint vocabulary to his own vocabulary, the fact that you have arsinos and koitain right there in Leviticus 18, 22, to ignore that or to make that a minor issue.

53:40

I mean, for me, as soon as I read anyone and see them trying to get around that, I know they're not dealing honestly with the text anymore.

53:47

There's an agenda at work here. Yeah, absolutely. And in point of fact, if Paul coined the term or if the term had been coined about that time by another

53:59

Jew, that's the only issue of debate, because it's clear where it comes from. And then in First Corinthians six, nine, when it's drawn with Malacost.

54:06

Look, you know, you're in trouble when leading gay scholars, lesbian scholars say, oh, yeah, no question.

54:14

We know what it means. I even said, can you be gay and Christian from from a gay and lesbian online encyclopedia?

54:20

And this is bad news, bad news. This was Paul's position. Lesbian scholar Bernadette Bruton said, yeah,

54:26

Paul condemned all forms of homoeroticism. So there's just no way around it. Now, here's the other thing.

54:33

You and I know that dictionaries, lexicons, they're compiled by scholars.

54:38

Some of them are very liberal. Some of them just are very interested in the biblical languages, but they themselves are not committed believers.

54:45

They are not trying to uphold orthodoxy. It's just like mathematical formulas to them.

54:51

They're just looking. What does the word mean? What is the history of interpretation? Tell us what can we find out in cognate languages, et cetera.

54:58

So I own, as I'm sure you do, all of the major ancient Greek lexicons of importance of ancient

55:04

Greek, Koine Greek, biblical Greek, overalls to a gentle Greek, all of them and every one that that quotes this word and the key word in question, arsenic, every one of them agrees that it has to do with homosexual practice.

55:21

And this was not a conspiracy. This this was not the Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson lexicon of the

55:27

New Testament. You know, this this is these were folks that were dispassionate linguists and and language scholars.

55:35

And when you see this universal agreement, look, there's no conspiracy.

55:41

This is not an anti -gay who knows. Some of them could have been homosexual themselves. We don't even know. But they're just saying this is what the word means.

55:48

And there's really no dispute. And when people come along later on and say, well, it is disputable. No, that that is absolutely not good lexical work.

55:58

And I do get into it. And can you be gay and Christian? I try to break it down so everybody can understand.

56:04

But I do get into the lexical arguments as clearly as I can. Yeah, you did. I'll have to express.

56:09

I am concerned, though, because if you compare the entry in the second edition of back then, it was

56:18

Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Donker. Now it's Bauer, Donker, Arndt and Gingrich. So it's third edition.

56:24

In fact, it's right there. If anyone's looking on the it's down there on the shelf. But if you compare the entry for Arsene Coytes, it has tripled in size between the second and third editions.

56:37

And I do sense a softening in the definition that's provided. And I am concerned about that because the vast majority of the citations in the scholarly literature provided are from revisionists.

56:49

And I certainly could see, given what's going on today, given the time, given enough time,

56:54

I can see pressure being put on University of Chicago or something like that to make changes. I mean, I there's nothing any longer that would surprise me that the other side will do at this point as far as putting pressure upon people to suppress the truth, and I'm I'm honestly concerned about that.

57:10

At least, though, you'll be able to see, in other words, these are scholars who are looking at the exact same text for years and years and years with centuries of history of interpretation.

57:19

And if it changes at a certain point culturally, you understand why, just like the definition of marriage.

57:26

I mean, there was really no dispute about that and what it meant. Now suddenly it can mean a little of everything.

57:31

And you've got a man arguing for the right to marry his computer. The word has lost its meaning.

57:36

Real quickly, we're pretty much out of time, but I just wanted to give you an opportunity. You get to the end of the book and throughout the book, you have used the phrase gay

57:50

Christians, but then you get to the the end and basically ask the question, is there such a thing?

57:59

Give us real, real briefly how you you finish up the finish up your presentation. Sure. I put gay

58:05

Christian in quotes the whole way through the book, not to offend, but to say, let's understand what we mean by this.

58:12

If you mean a practicing homosexual following Jesus, no, then that's not a true Christian. But I believe it's a mistake to buy into gay identity.

58:22

I'm not saying that someone doesn't feel this way deeply. I'm not saying that it goes back to their earliest sexual or romantic memories.

58:29

I'm saying it's a modern construct. But more importantly, for a child of God, if you've given your life to the

58:35

Lord, you're a son or a daughter of God. That's your primary identity. You may have same sex attractions, but that does not define who you are.

58:46

And if you can start there, this does not define you. This this is not the label you want to wear.

58:52

That's a modern construct. You want to wear the label of a child of God, of a follower of Jesus, of a disciple.

58:59

If you'll do that, a lot of the power of this can be broken right then and there.

59:05

And you will now begin to walk with God in a more holistic way. And sure, these are issues to deal with in your life.

59:12

And there there could be things that need ministry or healing or transformation within you. But that's secondary to being a wholly devoted child of God.

59:20

And just one quick request for the wonderful dividing line followers. If you get the book, please post a review on Amazon.

59:28

Can you be gay and Christian? If you don't have the book, read the reviews and check off those that you find helpful or unhelpful.

59:35

So far, we've not been inundated with gay activist reviews, but we've had a few folks, one guy, I think, posted ten different reviews and called me the modern

59:43

Fred Phelps, who advocates human sacrifice and crazy stuff. So it just for the sake of readers, it helps us get the truth out.

59:52

And late June, I'm scheduled on Moody Radio to have a debate with Matthew Vines.

59:57

And as long as that happens, I really want to say, let's do some public moderated, full scale debates.

01:00:02

And hopefully, James, you and I can be involved together on those. That would be an extraordinary joy. Yeah, I really want to hope that that can that can happen.

01:00:10

I've been trying to contact Matthew Vines. I'm going to have to find a phone number or something to try and pursue that some more, because as I've said,

01:00:18

I think the best way to one of the best ways to do this is if he's doing these these seminars, these get togethers and he wants to train people on how to do this, that's the best training in the world.

01:00:29

Let's let's I'll I'll come I'll I'll go into there. You know, you've you've done the same thing.

01:00:35

I've debated in mosques. You know, that's that's what you and I do. I'll go there and I'm sure you would join me if if they wanted to have that kind of a situation and we'd make it work out.

01:00:46

And so the book is called Can You Be Gay and Christian? Michael Brown. And I'm very much thankful for the book being available.

01:00:55

And I really appreciate your taking the time to be with us. Oh, thanks for having me. Thanks for the special broadcast.

01:01:01

Really appreciate it. And thanks for all you do, brother. Please try not to catch any major diseases as you fly over to Israel.

01:01:08

I will I will plan on the stuff and those airliners, you know, you know what

01:01:13

I'm talking about. It's it's tough. But thanks very much for being with us, Michael. Thank you. All right. God bless. All right, folks, thank you very much for joining us today on the program.

01:01:21

That's the whole shebang. So we're going to be back again. Remember, next

01:01:26

Tuesday, we're going to have a discussion of Molinism and with a advocate for Molinism.

01:01:35

And so that'll be exciting. And then we've got all sorts of stuff to get back to after that. Lots of things to be talking about here on The Dividing Line.