March 23, 2004

The Dividing Line Opens With Scheduling Banter and the Topic Introduction

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good morning and welcome to The Dividing Line. Yes, it is a Tuesday morning. Too many of you have figured out what the new schedule was, so we had to change it again. Keep you hopping, keep you confused.

Hey, it's a good enough excuse, I suppose. Actually, you know, we just have changing schedules and therefore the schedule changes. That's sort of how it works. 877 -753 -3341. I forget how long ago it was.

It was quite some time ago. We reviewed on the program a video put out by Soulforce. Soulforce is Mel White's pro-Christian homosexual organization. The front of the video here says, Soulforce is an interfaith movement committed to ending spiritual violence perpetuated by religious policies and teachings against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

That's GLBT for those of you who want to keep up with the newest terms. Soulforce volunteers are guided by the Soulforce principles of relentless nonviolent resistance as taught by Gandhi and King. They forgot to buy in there.

Wherever you are in your own faith journey, you are welcome to do justice with Soulforce. Of course, their symbol includes a picture of Martin Luther King and Gandhi on it as if homosexuality is a civil right.

And we'll start taking calls about, I don't know, maybe 20 till maybe. Didn't spend all morning putting together these cuts to just go, let's just go over to another subject and not worry about it. So we might just want to open the phone lines up a little bit later and go that direction.

Soulforce, Biblical Misuse, and the Charge That Romans 1 Condemns Homosexuality

I saw this video and went, oh, we need to refer to this. We need to respond to this. This is called There's a Wideness in God's Mercy. If you've heard that particular line a lot recently, that's because it's being used by open theists and inclusivists and everybody else.

And they use it to turn God's mercy into a basis for mocking God's law and the need of atonement and all the rest of this stuff. But this is what I saw that I wanted to respond to. Here's the description of the video.

The Reverend Dr. Louis B. Smedes, the esteemed Christian theologian and ethicist, demolishes the arguments that Romans 1 condemns homosexuals. He concludes that using the Bible against GLBT people is a heresy.

Well, I have a master's degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, so I know a lot about Louis Smedes. I think I may have mentioned the program that one of the last classes I took for my first master's degree was an ethics class.

And my ethics professor was likewise a graduate from Fuller and a student of Smedes. And it was in that ethics class that I debated the professor during the middle of the class on abortion. Of course, I was opposed to it, and he was pro-choice.

It gives you some idea of the ethics of the system that we're dealing with over there at Fuller. And so I thought, all right, here's someone. This is the kind of thing we do. Here is a situation, it's an apologetic situation, where you're going to have a scholar, quote-unquote.

He was an ethicist. To call him a theologian or an ex-judge or something like that is really to take him way out of his field. He died a couple of years ago in his 80s. And it shouldn't be overly surprising that he was involved with this because Mel White was first told that he was a homosexual man, and that's how God made him, by a professor, an associate of Lewis Smedes, a female associate of Lewis Smedes, at Fuller Seminary.

So it shouldn't be overly shocking that that's part of what Soulforce is offering these days. But I thought, okay, here's an apologetic situation. Here's going to be some claims that are going to be made, maybe some statements concerning the original tongues or the context of the passage or something like that.

And so we listen to the video, and I have some clips set up today, and that's not what we get. And this, however, does give you a tremendously good insight into the kind of pure rhetoric. And we still have to respond to rhetoric.

I mean, if that's the best the other side has, you still have to at least provide a response to it. But to do so, we have to be able to see through the fact that this rhetoric is designed to not increase thinking or increase truthful contemplation of the Word of God.

It is meant to put you on a guilt trip, stop your thinking, and as a result, bring confusion. And so the program began with Mel White. And this is setting the theme, and this is the constant theme of Soulforce.

The constant theme of Soulforce is to make you feel guilty if you believe the Bible. If you believe what the Bible says, then you're a terrible, horrible, unloving, unkind, mean, nasty person. And you should absolutely be ashamed of yourself for being associated with any church that would be so unloving and so unkind as to not accept God's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender children.

Because God made them that way, and if you ain't accepting them, then you're not accepting God's children. You're a horrible Pharisee, and really, you're the one that should be thrown out of the church.

We should just turn the church over to the homosexuals because they have super rights. That's really what we're all about here. So listen to Mel White as he starts this particular program.

The Bible. I love this book. I've spent my lifetime studying it. But I have to admit, it is the most dangerous book ever written. For centuries, it's been used to support bloody crusades and shameful inquisitions.

In the last 200 years, it's been used to support slavery and apartheid and segregation. Now it's being used to condemn and caricature God's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children. Since my book, Stranger at the Gate, came out, Gary and I have received tens of thousands of letters from gay and lesbians in the closet who are victims of biblical misuse.

They live lives of guilt and fear and anger and loneliness. Here's just one of the letters I've gotten recently, a paragraph from it. Listen. It is with great sense of anger and frustration and sadness that I write to let you know of a death in our Christian family.

C .H. received word earlier this week that her 28-year-old nephew, M .B., hung himself. He was a gay man. He accepted his sexuality until he became a Christian a few months ago. Understanding from the Bible and the church that he could not be both a Christian and a gay man, Mark's suicide note addressed to God read, I don't know how else to fix this.

The Bible. What you're about to hear about the Bible, especially Romans 1, the chapter that's used most often to caricature and condemn us, what you're about to hear could save your life. Dr. Lewis Smedes has for 50 years been a biblical scholar and author and teacher.

He is about to tell you what he feels about Romans 1 after studying it for a lifetime. How long will it be? How many more people will have to die until we hear from Dr. Smedes and the others who are saying that the Bible in the Old and New Testaments both is about God's love for all people.

Dr. Smedes is a best-selling biblical author whose books, To Forgive and Forget, The Art of Forgiving, and Keeping Hope Alive, have been read by literally millions of people. May the spirit of truth warm and change your heart as you listen to these profound and prophetic words about Romans 1.

Well, there you go, folks.

If that doesn't lay out exactly what I was saying, I don't know what does. Biblical misuse. It's the church's fault. The violence being done to these individuals by misusing the Bible, by using the Bible to beat people over the head.

Of course, realize we're talking about individuals who are engaged in an activity the Bible clearly says is opposed to God's purpose in their life. And so, in that context, anyone who is brought under conviction by the scriptures in regards to any kind of sin could then accuse the Bible of abusing them.

So, if you're brought under conviction for adultery, then you can say, well, the Bible is abusing me and misusing me because I feel so guilty about being in this situation. If the Bible just wouldn't tell me that I'm a sinner, then all would be well.

And I would be happy. Well, there you have it. But it's always put in this very syrupy, very emotional post. Everything is designed to appeal to the postmodern mindset where feelings are the only thing that is really important.

We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So, God's feelings, we don't care what God thinks. Man's feelings. I wonder if the emphasis on man's will has anything to do with that. Man's feelings are all that really matters.

So, there you have it. There you have the setup. Then there's a transition to Lewis Meads, longtime professor of ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. And I'm going, all right, here's going to be stuff on Romans 1 and the languages.

Let's listen to what Lewis Meads had to say.

Experience, Ethics, and the Claim That Homosexuality Is God-Given

I'm a minister in probably as conservative an evangelical church as you could find in the United States. In many ways, it's a wonderful church. So, I come out of that very conservative family, fundamentalist family, very conservative, Calvinistic church.

And I struggle with a lot of things besides the issue of homosexuality, for goodness sakes. I spent 30 years of my life teaching Christian ethics. And I think it began there because I came to the conclusion that even though there are ideals and standards and norms born with different gifts and different sets of raw materials, I like to put it this way.

We all are born with a story to write. But we can only write it with the raw materials we're given. And what God wants of us is to write the best story we can out of what we have.

And for Dr. Meads, you are a homosexual if God made you that way, and therefore you are to write your story out of what God gives to you. But this is the kind of ethics that was done at Fuller, and it's only gotten worse as time has gone by, unfortunately.

But that's the kind of concept that you have being presented here. He continues on. He continues on. Hello, come on, little thing, play for me here.

Then I met a lot of other gay people, lesbian people, who suffered a lot at the hands of all things of their churches. The one place, Mel, the one place on this earth where grace and love and fairness ought to be the theme of life for them.

Their gay children, their gay sons, their lesbian daughters are treated with such an injustice. Nobody that I've met in these churches wants to be cruel and wants to be unjust and unfair in their treatment of them.

But their minds are so conditioned that when they are cruel to homosexual people, their minds tell them all that they are doing is eschewing, rejecting sin. And it grieves me so terribly. I think that the church's treatment of homosexuality has become the greatest heresy in the history of the church.

It's living heresy. It's treating God's children as if they're not God's children. And if there's any heresy in the world, it's that. So it isn't just that the church is making a mistake. It's doing a great wrong.

Well, there you go.

What do you say to all of this? I mean, for those of us who believe the Bible to be the word of God, we have here a man using his experience and his reasoning. He has yet to give us any biblical foundation.

He's simply said, well, I've known these people, and I have decided to proclaim them to be God's children. Despite anything else, they're God's children, and hence, I guess, what you do is irrelevant.

Sin is irrelevant. Atonement, sacrifice, irrelevant. For many of the people, and again, I'm a graduate of the seminary, and this was, I'd say I graduated in 89. Was it 89? Yeah, in 89. And even then, there are many people saying, look, the Lord's Supper is for everybody.

You invite sinners to the Lord's Supper. This is how you do evangelism. And there was just so much heterodoxy there already that I would imagine that the following 15 years have only made it just that much worse.

But I want you to catch this part once again.

And it grieves me so terribly.

What grieves him so terribly? Let me back this up just a little bit. What grieves him so terribly is those who speak out against homosexuality, and they really think that they're just eschewing sin, that they really are addressing an issue of sin.

Now, for Lewis Smedes, that's something that no one can really do.

And wants to be unjust and unfair in their treatment of them. But their minds are so conditioned that when they are cruel to homosexual people, their minds tell them all that they are doing is eschewing, rejecting sin.

Now, notice that. When they are cruel, what does it mean to be cruel? To identify homosexuality as sin. Therefore, if you exegete the scriptures, if you deal with the scriptures in their context, and you deal with them in their original languages, and you believe them, you have no choice but to be cruel, or you need to look for some other way.

And no one wants to be cruel. And so you must look for some other way to deal with the authority of scripture. That is, you need to deny the authority of scripture.

It leaves me so terribly. I think that the church's treatment of homosexuality has become the greatest heresy in the history of the church.

The greatest heresy in the history of the church. Let's ponder this for just a moment. First of all, we should all feel extremely, extremely guilty for having grieved Dr. Smedes. Don't you feel guilty about that?

Isn't that the postmodern way? Dr. Smedes is grieved. And he speaks very passionately. And so automatically we feel guilty. And you're saying, That's why people say you're so mean. You have no feelings.

Folks, it's just simply that I realize that what this man is saying grieves God. And as I read the Psalms, I don't see that I have any basis for being concerned about him being grieved when he is grieving God.

This postmodernism is so opposite the Christian worldview that the only people who would seriously buy into this are either those who have rejected openly the Christian worldview, have no exposure whatsoever to it in the Scriptures, or they are so much more influenced by it that they think that this feeling of compassion that you have is somehow godly.

It's not. It is not godly to feel grieved about someone who is twisting and distorting the Scriptures and telling people who need to hear a message of judgment upon their sin and then forgiveness in Christ that they're just fine.

That's not being mean. That's not abusing these people. No. It is these people who do not understand what the Christian concept of love is. So I'm grieved the way the psalmist was grieved. He said his eyes shed water over those who trample upon God's law.

There's a reason why God has said what he has said about these things. Homosexuality kills. It destroys. We don't show love for anyone by compromising, by being postmodernists at this point. And to call this the greatest heresy of the Church.

Think of those who've denied the resurrection, denied the deity of Christ, denied justification and atonement. And the greatest heresy of the Church is that we look honestly at the Scriptures. We see what they say.

We handle them correctly. And realize this is not the way that God intends man and woman to relate to one another. It destroys them. And that's a heresy?

Unbelievable. It's living heresy. It's treating God's children as if they're not God's children. And if there's any heresy in the world, it's that. Really?

Is that so? God's children. How do you become one of God's children, Dr. Smedes? Well, I know you don't believe in heresies, so I don't know that you could really answer that question. The best we could get would be a survey of the history of the Church and the development of doctrine and the traditions that various groups have.

But no one could really answer that question. I'll never forget walking out of a systematic theology class at Fuller Seminary. And we had just finished yet another survey of the development of doctrine.

And I remember walking along with an attorney friend of mine. And he said to me, he said, Well, that's all very interesting. But what do we believe about that? And that's what the systematic theology class is all about.

We never did get around to what we believe about that because that's really not the issue. There is no way of really knowing what God's truth is anymore. Well, he did eventually, what he did is a long section.

It's only a 30 minute debate. But it's a presentation video. Eventually, what he does is he talks about how the denomination he was in, which was some Reformed denomination, eventually changed its view regarding divorce.

And that becomes his paradigm. Back in the 50s, you excluded anyone who had been divorced. And now, they've changed that. They saw through their error. And therefore, they now accepted divorced people into the church.

And that becomes the paradigm for homosexuality. Hopefully, I don't have to explain the differences there. So he then continues on.

The Claim That Paul Is Hard to Understand and Jesus Never Mentioned Homosexuality

So, I'm saying, here are homosexual people who are committed to a lasting, enduring relationship of closeness and love to another person. Now, catch that.

Catch that. Folks, this is the essence of the kind of... If you ever talk to someone who's exposed to soul force, and you are the people, the audience of this program, are the people who are going to be talking to these folks because you're the kind of people that are concerned about what God's truth says.

You want to apply it throughout life. All of your worldview, you want to be under the Lordship of Christ. Therefore, you are going to be encountering this situation. And this is what you're going to hear.

You're going to hear people saying, well, look, all you're talking about is the wild homosexual lifestyle out there with multiple, multiple partners. Which, by the way, any honest survey says is the vast majority of homosexual relationships.

Especially male homosexual relationships. But this is the terminology you're going to hear.

To a lasting, enduring relationship of closeness and love to another person.

So here you've got the idea. Well, see, we're talking about monogamous, committed relationships over life. Loving relationships. What's a loving relationship biblically? You see, our postmodernism tells us we can't even ask that question.

You can't say something about a relationship being loving. As long as you say you have a loving relationship, we have been taught that you must accept the claim at face value. There can be no standards for defining what is and what is not loving.

Therefore, you have to accept that as a given. We can't. We can't. The loving relationship of man and woman is a relationship where there is a compatibilism between the two. There is something in the woman that meets the need of the man.

Like the key in the lock. And vice versa. She was made to be a helpmate for him. It was not good that he should be alone. There is a correspondence between the man and the woman. There can be no correspondence in a relationship with a mirror image.

God did not make us that way. And so to define this as a loving relationship is to reject the biblical basis of defining what love is. And that is not a loving relationship. It is a selfish relationship because you're loving a mirror image of yourself.

And that is not what biblical love is all about.

They're wanting to fulfill the same needs as anybody else is. The very same. And they love God. And they love Jesus.

A lot of them more than I do. Now, did you catch that? You see, in postmodern liberal theology, and that's what you've got here, in postmodern liberal theology, loving God is an emotion. It has no content.

There's no doctrine to it. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, don't worry about it. It's not relevant. We don't need to worry about those things. Only fundamentalists who believe in inerrancy. Closed-minded people who never think are concerned about these things.

They love God. They love Jesus. And how do we know this? Do we know this because externally we can see their concern for God's truth? No. Of course not. There's no external verification of loving God, loving Christ, outside of merely your words.

But we know biblically that's not true. A person who says, I love God, but then hates his brother. See, there's a standard given in Scripture. A person who says, I love God, but denies that Jesus Christ has come to flesh.

Who is he? He's the Antichrist. Oh! Objective standards! Doctrine! Ah! Yeah, that's why it's there. That's why it's part and parcel of the revelation of God. And so you hear all the time, I love God! I love Jesus!

You're so mean and hateful to say I don't. Well, when you're doing openly and without repentance the very things that Jesus died to bring redemption for, don't tell me you love him.

That's really the issue, isn't it? Why doesn't the church welcome them? Well, because of something that was said in Scripture. Well, think of what the Lord said about divorced people. See, there's the connection.

Why doesn't the church?

Because of Scripture. Because of Scripture. Remember how Mel Weiss started, dangerous book. Most dangerous book ever written. Now, what he's going to say is, well, remember what the Lord said about divorce?

And we've accepted them now, therefore we take our break and we're going to continue. We've only got two and a half clips left, but one of them is fairly long. So I don't know that we're going to get the calls today.

We might. I'll let you know within the first ten minutes on the break. We're going to take our break and then come back here on The Dividing Line. We'll be right back.

Ministry Book Ads and the Return to Romans 1

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject. Explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality.

Get your copy in the bookstore at almen .org. Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith.

In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomen .org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?

A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy. Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Potters' Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potters' Freedom is much more than just a reply. It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded.

Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called extreme Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Potters' Freedom, a defense of the Reformation, and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free, you'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are reviewing and refuting the comments made by Lewis Smedes in a Soulforce video titled There's a Wideness in God's Mercy. Still in one of the cuts here. Let's continue on listening.

To Lewis Smedes. There's a much better case in terms of obeying the Bible for excluding remarried people than there is for excluding homosexual people. Because the Lord says that very explicitly. And to get at a clear view of what St. Paul says about homosexuality, you've got to wrestle and work, and it's not all that clear.

Jesus, by the way, never having said a word about it.

There's two of the primary arguments of the pro-homosexual quote-unquote Christian movement. A, it's really hard to understand, Paul. And what they do is they just, you get all these different perspectives out there.

They've already written all these books. I've got them over on the shelf over there. And they're still cranking about. And each person takes sometimes multiple different views, frequently self-contradictory views.

They throw all this dirt out there from all these different perspectives and say, see, no one can really figure out. I mean, we can't question the motivations of any of these scholars, can we? And therefore, if they say it's difficult, then it must be impossible for us laymen so we really can't figure Paul out.

And of course, then, Jesus didn't say anything about it at all. He obviously didn't think it was important. And since we all love Jesus, then if Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, then, well, then we shouldn't either.

I hope your thinking is clear enough to give you an immediate response to such vacuous argumentation. Are there many who promote all sorts of different understandings of Paul? Yes, but there are many who promote all sorts of different understandings of the Resurrection, or the existence of God, for that matter.

The fact that there are differing opinions does not in and of itself say anything about the clarity of the Revelation. Because opinions are not necessarily based upon the examination of facts. And when it comes to dealing with sin, human beings have the tendency to be very selective in their viewing of factual data.

And when it comes to the Lord Jesus, when it comes to what He did or did not say, it is amazing that anyone could say what was just said and think they'd get away with it, but not all that amazing. What do I mean?

Well, it's obvious the Lord Jesus did not address many things from the Old Testament. The Old Testament never talked about bestiality. Does that mean He felt it was unimportant or good? Of course not!

He did not have to repeat everything in the first 39 books, in only the first four of the New Testament, to somehow say that was valid or true. He identified Himself with the one God who had given that law, and He said He did not come to destroy it.

Now, if you happen to interpret the phrase but to fulfill it as being to destroy it, then that's your problem, but that's not what He said. And so, to say Jesus never said anything about that is a non-point, but you know why they can get away with it?

Let's face it, folks. Why can they get away with it? Because the vast majority of evangelicals, whether they know it or not, whether they even know what the term means or not, are functional antinomians.

Are they not? If you have an evangelical church where the Old Testament, where the 39 books of the Old Covenant are considered somehow less Scripture, well, then how can you avoid some level of antinomianism, some level of a disrespect for God's law, and hence confusion in the New Testament about what Romans is talking about when it quotes from the Old Testament, or Hebrews when it quotes from the Old Testament.

It's no wonder because most people never read the books that they're quoting from. And that's why they can get away with it. Jesus never said anything about it. The immediate response, the immediate response of anyone should be, you've got to be kidding me.

Jesus affirmed the holiness and rightness of God's law in everything he did, and you say he said nothing about it? What are you trying to say? That should be the immediate response, but it isn't. We go, oh, yeah, I guess I don't remember him saying that.

I'll have to get out my concordance and see if maybe, well, isn't that what we do? That's what we do. Well, he did finally get around to Romans 1, and here it is, and I'm going to have to hurry to get all this in.

I apologize. We did have a call earlier. We'll have to do that on Thursday. Thursday, 4 o 'clock.

This is the important section. We actually got to Romans 1, so we need to cover it. Now, I thought about Romans 1, and I was amazed at how I had glossed over it thinking that I knew what it meant, and it suddenly dawned on me, on reading it, I had it all wrong.

I want to read a couple of verses from that chapter. This is an exceedingly important thing for those who want to follow the Bible. In Romans 1, St. Paul is talking about people who in their hearts knew God, but refused to know him in their heads, and therefore were ungrateful and never said thanks to God.

So God says, alright, you want to live without me? Then I'll let you. See how you can do without me. And God did that. And what happened to them was that they got enmeshed in a swarm of vices. Listen to this.

Murder and strife and deceit and craftiness, gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. There are some people amongst all of these who lust after people of their own sex.

How did they get that way? Who are these people? Well, they're the people.

Who knew God in their hearts, were ungrateful to him. Now let's stop right there. Do you hear what he's doing? This is some group. It's not everybody. This is just some special group. The universality of the conviction of sin in Romans 1, which becomes foundational to understanding why Paul then turns in Romans 2 to the Jews, and then in Romans 3 says, okay, now we've concluded everybody's under sin.

Here, what they do, and I had a homosexual quote-unquote pastor. I will not call a homosexual a pastor because of the fact that the Bible precludes that, but a homosexual quote-unquote pastor should be quote-end-quote.

I know, I'm sorry. I apologize. Anyway, used this very same excuse on a radio program years ago. This is actually what gave rise to the eventual writing of the same-sex controversy. And this is a special group of people.

And it's a very small group of people, actually. See? And so, since homosexuals love God, and homosexuals acknowledge God, and homosexuals pray to God, and they don't suppress the knowledge of God, therefore they can't be these people.

This isn't describing me because I love God. That's the argumentation that's being used here. The entire universality of the text, so clearly and plainly foundational to any meaningful exegesis, is thrown out.

Turned on its head.

There are also people who worship snakes and other animals and human beings. I don't know who those people were, but I am certainly sure of this. They're not the homosexual people that I know.

See? There you go. I don't know who Paul was talking about. They're bad people. I'm glad I don't live next to them. I don't know who he was talking about, but it's not any of the homosexuals I know. Well, you know what?

It's not any of the adulterers I know. It's not any of the murderers I know. It's not any of the thieves I know. It's not any of the liars I know. As long as the liar says, I love God! Okay, that just doesn't have anything to do with you.

I guess that's not a sin anymore. And they put this out as if it has meaning? Wow! Talk about blindness.

These are people... Remember, God didn't reject them because they were homosexual. They became homosexual... Well, they acted homosexual because God had abandoned them.

Oh, catch that? Catch that? He almost had it right there for a second. They became homo... Oh, wait a minute. No one becomes homosexual. It's not... Oh, I'm sorry. They just are. So they acted that way.

These aren't actually even real homosexuals. See? These are heterosexuals who are acting like homosexuals. And you'll hear that all the time. All the time you'll hear people say, Well, in reality, what you've got going here is these...

What God's condemning here is their unnaturalness, is that they're not really homosexuals like we are. They're fake homosexuals. They're actually heterosexuals who become... who act... They're heterosexuals who act like they're homosexuals.

See? And that's what's wrong because you should just be what you are. It's as if that has something to do with what Paul was saying, right? Not the other way around. Very important.

So I say, God abandoned people because they were ungrateful to Him. And they ended up lusting after their own sex and doing all sorts of unnatural things.