Todd Friel, Obama and Gay Marriage (rerun)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Well, knock me over with a feather. It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same -sex couples should be able to get married.

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I'm shocked, simply shocked. This is No Compromise Radio. This is not

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Mike Abendroth. He's mellow and cool. My name is Todd Friel. I host Wretched Radio and Wretched TV.

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Neither of those things. And Mike has graciously invited me to sit in and take his place.

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I think he's suntanning. And so for the next 24 minutes, you and I are going to talk about how now do we respond,

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Christian, now that the president of the United States has, to nobody's surprise, affirmed gay marriage.

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If you have been paying any attention at all, this is simply not a shocker. I know some people have been stunned by the news.

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Really? We really thought that the president was not going to really reveal his true colors?

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And of course, a lot of Christian leaders are asking, oh, wow, what do we do now? And I would like to share with you some of the responses, which

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I think helps us to understand part of the reason why it appears that we are losing this particular culture war known as the marriage issue.

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I'm not going to name names. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. These are decent

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Christian fellows. They are not outside of the lines of orthodoxy. And so we don't want to go firing and blasting away at our

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Christian brothers who have been trying to fight the war on marriage through political means.

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Now, should Christians be involved in politics? Answer, yes, of course.

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If you want to be, be involved. Should Christians vote? Absolutely. And we celebrate the victories that we have seen in both the life and the marriage issue.

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30 states are now defining marriage as between one man and one woman. That's a good thing.

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When it comes to the life issue, is it not good that babies have been saved, that lives have been rescued because people go to abortion clinics with a sign or to try to counsel, or these people,

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I love this, these people who build life centers next to the abortion clinics.

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Love that. In fact, I just drove by one in St. Paul in Highland Park. There's a Planned Parenthood right on Highland Parkway, if you happen to be from there.

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And somebody opened up a life clinic right next to it. They leased the space right next to them. So maybe women would trip in and see them get an ultrasound, see that it's a human being and not a blob of tissue.

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After all, if it were just a blob of tissue, either we would not be upset and want abortions to be safe, legal, and rare, or we'd be mourning the loss of a lot of moles because that's just a blob of tissue.

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Nobody seems to get too upset with mole removal. At any rate, they open up this life clinic right next to the

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Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood had to move. They just drove them away. Well done.

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We celebrate that. However, I wonder, as we look at the landscape of what is going on with the life issue, the marriage issue, other morality issues, while good intention, doing a lot of great things, and I'm not dissing anybody for it,

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I wonder if we maybe need to alter the strategy a bit. There are some people who would say,

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Christians, they don't need to be involved in politics at all. Just forget about the political arm in order to try to accomplish any sort of moral good.

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There would be other people that are, they typically call themselves family ministries. They are Christians that just call themselves family ministries or moral ministries that are trying to affect change through government and say, we've got to be involved.

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We've got to be organizing as groups. And I think that this is a big wing in evangelicalism.

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Personally, my position, do I take a this side or that side? I take both sides. Without trying to sound postmodern and squishy,

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I take both. I think that Christians and Christian ministries can be involved in these issues if they do it in a gospel -centered way.

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Let me share with you the response of just a couple of the evangelicals after President Obama announced, shock,

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I'm actually for gay marriage. This is one individual from a family organization.

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Said in a statement that the president's remarks were not surprising and they create a clear distinction between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

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Okay, did you hear that? That's a political response. And that's all it is. And when a

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Christian organization only focuses on politics, then we are nothing more than a political organization.

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And here's the problem. People see this Christian organization acting like, well, let's just say it,

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Republicans, and it confuses the gospel. They think that all we're about is somehow trying to impose our morality on people.

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And in a sense, we are. And in a sense, I don't have much of a problem with that. Somebody's morality is gonna get imposed.

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I say let the Christian morality get imposed. But when they just hear us speaking politically, responding politically, and they never hear the gospel, they think we're

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Pharisees. We're nothing but moralists imposing our values on people. We're not

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Pharisees. We're the Jesus people. Sorry for those of you from the 60s. We're the gospel -centered people.

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If Christians are going to be involved in politics, and I say hats off to you, we gotta be bringing the gospel.

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We've gotta stop responding just politically. We've gotta stop with the statistics. We've gotta stop with quoting

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Ronald Reagan. We need to start quoting Jesus. What does God say about this issue?

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These days in our postmodern milieu, where everybody has an opinion, and everybody's opinion is right, we are no different than any other organization or group simply vying to have our morals imposed on the nation.

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And typically, it will be determined by who is the biggest, who is the strongest, who's got the most votes.

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Is that the gospel way? Is that the way to go about getting people to behave the way that we want to?

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Isn't that just cleaning up the outside of the cup? And it's not the gospel way. What's gonna happen?

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Right now, I've got a statistic for you. That the majority, this is Gallup, George Gallup. Half of Americans believe gay marriage should be legal, but nearly as many are opposed.

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Okay, so the majority of people in this country now, despite the 30 states voting for marriage, are for gay marriage.

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I guess we lose. I guess the party's over. We're all done. They're gonna win in the voting booth.

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They're gonna win in the minds of the public. Public opinion is on their side now.

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And so we are now the minority when it comes to the marriage issue. We're done.

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We're done. Can you imagine what the poll would have been 50 years ago? 50 years ago, if you had asked

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Americans, where do you stand on marriage? Should it be between a man and a woman or two men and two women? I can only speculate.

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I'm not George Barna here, but I can only speculate. Over 90 % would say, are you kidding? Of course marriage is one man and one woman.

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All right, in the last 50 years, what has changed? I'll tell you what's changed. The church has changed.

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That's who's changed. We're gonna leave the deficiencies of the modern American church out of this conversation just for a moment, but let's face it.

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Thanks to the seeker -sensitive movement, they've gotten all squishy. Theology is not taught. There's a low view of scripture.

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Most, and this is not just an off -the -cuff comment, the majority of people attending churches these days are gulp, false converts.

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They are professors, but they're not possessors, but we'll leave that aside for a moment. This big movement, this political activism movement inside of evangelicalism has changed our culture.

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Why? Because we go in to try to impose our values on people and we're not bringing the gospel.

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Why are homosexuals so torqued at evangelical Christians?

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I think two reasons. Number one, we oppose their values, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

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They're gonna get mad, but I think the other reason that they're so mad at us is because we are just making it about morality.

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They're mad at us for the wrong thing. They're mad at us because we are opposing their lifestyle.

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Now, they should be upset because we're opposing their lifestyle, but the primary reason they should be furious with us if they're gonna be angry is because of the gospel.

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They should be mad at us for the gospel. The gospel is a stumbling block. The gospel that says, you're a sinner, you're a sinner, you're a sinner, you're a sinner, and no matter what you do, you cannot remove those sins, you cannot be cleansed without the gift of grace that is given by Jesus Christ.

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That's the gospel. Forgiveness of sins, complete, total, thorough in Jesus. That's what they should be mad about, but I don't think they are.

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I think if you listen to the talk shows, whenever they invite an evangelical on, what do you hear?

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Well, we're opposed to it, we think that's atrocious, we think that that's bad, and that's all they hear. So they hear us saying, you're bad, you're terrible, you're awful for society.

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No, I'm not saying that any of those things are wrong. I think it is bad for society.

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They are terrible, like I'm terrible, like you're terrible. So those things are right to say, but if that's all they're hearing, how would you feel?

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What if you were the minority group? What if you didn't know the truth? Imagine that, and somebody came along and said, your lifestyle is horrible, and you're going to hell.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? Remember, every man will profess his own goodness with his mouth.

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So no matter what the sexual stripe happens to be, everybody thinks that they're a good person. You come along and say, you're bad, and that's all you say?

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That's right to say, but if that's all you say without any context and without the gospel, the law destroys, but the gospel gives us hope.

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I can't blame them for being mad. Furthermore, when it comes to the gay issue, I think we need to remember, well, sexuality is a deep, profound thing.

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Is it not? And they love their lifestyle.

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They love their ability to be intimate with somebody in that particular way, deeply, profoundly, just like you as a heterosexual love it your way.

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So you got to remember that, because I always think about it this way. I'm looking right now, as I sit here in my radio studio, by the way,

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I'm Todd sitting in for Mike. I'm from Wretched Radio. This is No Compromise Radio. I'm sitting here in my studio in Atlanta, and I'm looking at pictures of my kids.

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And I always think, if somebody came to me and said, hey, you know your kids that you love so much?

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They got to go. You got to kill those kids. I'd think you're nuts, and I'd get very defensive.

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When we say to the homosexual, you've got to kill your sin, you got to stop it, I think it is perhaps at least getting close to as profound.

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Now, if we say the same thing to the homosexual, you've got sin, sexual sin, lust.

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Oh, don't forget greed. Don't forget envy. Don't forget blasphemy. Don't forget idolatry. Don't forget you dishonored your parents.

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Don't forget murder of the heart. Don't forget any of those. You've got all of those sins too, and we use the law to bring about the knowledge of sin, and you leave it, and therefore you're going to hell, and then you walk away.

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That's all they're hearing these days from us on the homosexual issue. We've got to keep going. We now have to say, but the good news of the gospel is,

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Jesus died for sinners. Jesus rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He's seated at the right hand of the

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Father, and he's ready to forgive, not just for your homosexual sins, not just for your sins of stealing, not for your sins of blasphemy, all of them, idolatry, murder of the heart, or murder, all of them, he stands ready to forgive if you will repent and put your trust in Jesus Christ.

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That's the message we need to be bringing, and so I say to all of the people who are still, and I think we still need to stand firm on our position on marriage being defined between one man and one woman.

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We stand firm on the life issue. We need to be bringing, yes, the law that says that's bad.

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Killing your baby is bad, but without a message of forgiveness, we're no longer gospel people.

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We're the Pharisee people. President Barack Obama, shocker, declaring that he is now okay for gay marriage.

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Listen to him as he describes how he went about the business of coming to the conclusion that gay marriage is now okay, and I think what you're going to hear is a confusion between law and gospel.

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It is my contention that the majority of people in this country, they do not understand the gospel. They think that it's the majority of people still have

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Santa Claus theology. Well, he's been making a list, checking it twice. You better make sure you're nice, because if you're naughty, you're in big trouble.

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Well, yeah, we got Jesus for forgiveness, but we got to be nice. That's not the gospel. The gospel is you are totally naughty.

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You are totally depraved. Jesus totally forgives sinners, and now because of that, the response to that is we are nice, but we keep sinning because, well, we're still on this side of the veil.

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We want to make sure that people hear the gospel, because these days, I don't think they have it right, and I don't think the president does either.

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This position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others, but when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only

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Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the golden rule. Hmm. Now, in the past,

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I've heard him speak on that, that it's all about doing stuff, doing stuff. Yeah, Jesus died, but it's about doing stuff.

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Now, if we understand doing stuff rightly, that Galatians screams, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's not works, and then you seem to have a contradictory message in the book of James, you got faith, then you're going to have works.

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Now, we rightly understand that straw -y epistle, as Martin Luther called it, that it is faith working itself out in acts of love, and that it is the response to salvation is works.

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Now, it's not works in order to be saved, it's not works in order to stay saved. I think the president, like many people, has it confused.

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He regularly talks about the importance of the golden rule. We share everything in common with other religions, the golden rule.

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That's not what we share in common with other religions. Even if we do share that in common with other religions, that's not what

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Christianity is about. The golden rule is not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about Jesus and his gospel.

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That's what Christianity is about. It's not about doing stuff. It's not about becoming a better, fill in the blank, parent, boss, worker, spouse, whatever.

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That's not what it's about. It's about Jesus and his gospel. That is what

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Christianity is about, and that's what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. Barack Obama regularly makes that mistake, and I fear that we are helping that bad theology just grow and spread in this country because we aren't helping them with the way that we're presenting the gospel.

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We aren't helping them with the way that we talk about moral issues. We aren't helping them understand eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.

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It's not about works. It's not about cleaning up the outside of the cup. Let me share with you another

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Christian response. The people who are upset because it's bad for society, it's bad for the culture that he promotes gay marriage, but just like that other fellow, they're very excited because they think that this might be really good for the fall election.

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Did you hear anything in there about the gospel? No, you don't.

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You don't hear anything about the gospel. Our position on the issue, we should not be wavering.

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We should not stop being involved with issues. Whatever way you might be determining your way of being involved, just make sure that you bring the gospel because if you don't bring the gospel,

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I fear that the trend will just continue to go the way that it's going, and worse than that, people will be confused about the good news of Jesus Christ, and people won't get saved from whatever lifestyle.

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Piers Morgan, a never one to miss an opportunity to jump on a hotly contested issue, he invited an evangelical

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Christian spokesperson on from a family organization to respond to Barack Obama stating,

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I'm okay with gay marriage now. If you look at heterosexual marriage, look at Kim Kardashian's marriage, which lasted, what was it, 72 hours or something?

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13 hours. Well, clearly the respect for the sanctity of marriage is absurd. And then you have a gay couple who've been together 20 years, who love each other, who actually really want to get married and who want to observe and respect the sanctity of marriage.

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Isn't it better for society that we let people that are in the second category take precedence over those in the first category and treat it as a celebrity bag extension?

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Could you end your question sometime soon? Couple of points worth noting there.

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First of all, I'm afraid he is right on the state of heterosexual marriage when no fault divorce was introduced.

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Wow, the church grabbed onto that. And the divorce rate, while not as high in the church as it is for the heathens, is still staggeringly high and churches stop preaching about it.

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He's absolutely right. We have failed when it comes to the issue of divorce. Just think, when was the last time you heard a sermon against divorce?

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You probably haven't, unless, of course, you went to Mike Abendroth's church. You don't hear it anymore because we've pretty much given up on that issue.

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If we don't like what we see in the culture, you need to look at the cult. And the cult in this society is the evangelical church.

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If the divorce rate is too high, and it is too high, we can blame the church.

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So he's right about that. However, his pragmatic approach to say, therefore, it's okay for homosexuals to get married because the heterosexuals have botched it up completely is simply not logical, and it's an untenable position.

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And it's one that, frankly, we should not enter into when it comes to debating the issue because we're going to lose.

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Why? We can respond and say, well, we've done some studies when it comes to social science, and we've discovered that it is bad if homosexuals get married.

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Wait about 10 minutes, and I promise you, somebody will fund a study that determines, no, actually, gay people do better in marriage than heterosexuals.

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In fact, I've seen those reports. Now what do we do? Now what do we do? Well, what we do is lose. It becomes study war.

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Well, I've got this study. Oh, I've got this study. Ah, I did it with this company. Well, we did it with that company.

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And we just end up chasing our tail. So we don't want to respond with social studies.

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We want to respond with, thus says the Lord. Here's the response from the evangelical from the family organization.

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You know, Pierce, I think that's a really good question, and I think a lot of people ask that question of themselves because, quite frankly, marriage among heterosexuals has not been good when we see a divorce rate around 50%.

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Of course, my beginnings in public policy as an elected official was to do just that, to strengthen marriage.

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I authored the nation's first covenant marriage law. I've been working on marriage law for over 15 years.

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And the reason it's important, Pierce, quite frankly, is because public policy shapes the culture.

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And what we're talking about here is not shaping policy or creating policy based upon an individual here, an individual there, but what the social science tells us is best for society as a whole.

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No, no, no, no, no. Now what social studies say, what God says. That's got to be the line.

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This is what God says. Otherwise, it is merely my opinion against your opinion.

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We don't cite what is right and wrong based on our opinion or our social study.

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We base it on what God says. And the issue that we need to be bringing out is this is why

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God is opposed to it. Marriage is theological. It's not a social science issue.

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It is a theological issue. Sir plays the role of Jesus. Woman plays the role of the church.

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The world looks and goes, aha, that's what the gospel is. And when we alter that, we alter the theology.

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Furthermore, this is what the Bible says is right. One man, one woman. Pierce, your issue isn't with me.

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Your issue is with God. Because when we go down the road of social sciences, I'm telling you, we are going, we are losing.

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Let me ask you about the social science aspect. How much more damage can a gay couple do if they're married to the damage they can do to civilization if they're unmarried?

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Yeah, again, Pierce, you're asking great questions because I think those are the questions that are going through people's minds. I think what we have to do, though, is look at the 40 years.

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Skip, I'm asking you because you're so opposed to it. Answer the question. Rather than telling me how great all my questions are, answer some of them.

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I am, if you'll give me just a second. We've got 40 years of social science research based upon public policy change.

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No fault divorce was a public policy adoption. What does the Bible say? And what that created was a spike in divorce, which is leveled off in the early 90s, and then created cohabitation.

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That was the result of a public policy adoption of no fault divorce. We can't think that we can tinker with the redefinition of marriage and say it's no longer between a man and a woman, which 5 ,000 years of human history has shown us, and say it's not going to affect it even further.

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Not human history, God, the Bible. It's going to result in more children growing up without moms and dads.

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Yeah, but not without - Okay, that's bad. Kids growing up without, I'm not saying that's not bad, and I'm not saying we can't use those things to support thus saith the

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Lord, but without thus saith the Lord, we sound like statisticians, we sound like moralists, we sound like Pharisees.

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This is the question, though. What more damage could a gay couple do to civilization and society if they're married to if they're just living together?

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Further redefining marriage. The reason we have cohabitation at skyrocketing rates is because -

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The church has failed. Okay, that's one individual.

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I didn't name his name. He's a good guy. He's a believer. My encouragement as we respond to this blast of not shocking information that the president is actually now in support of gay marriage is not to disengage from whatever area you feel called to serve in, government, politics, at the abortion clinic, at rallies, whatever.

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Keep being involved if you want to. But please bring the gospel.

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Please bring the Bible. Please bring thus saith the Lord. Otherwise, I'm telling you, the slippery slope we are on, we haven't even seen the bottom of the barrel yet.

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We are gospel people. And I am Todd Friel sitting in for Mike Abendroth on No Compromise Radio.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.