Two Articles on Homosexuality, the Profaning of Marriage, and the Church

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Yeah, that's, I don't know what's happened, but that is much louder than it normally is in my ear.

00:39

For some reason, something has taken place. But hey, we run this on bailing wire and chewing gum and all the rest of that stuff that we've talked about a long time.

00:49

Welcome to The Dividing Line. Lots to get to today. Seemingly there has been a domestic terror attack today and there seems to be,

00:58

I've seen some evidence that ISIS tweeted about it while it was happening, which may indicate that they were a part of it and four

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Marines dead so far in the shooting. You know, I think for a lot of Americans, that violence is just over there.

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You know, that's Syria, that's Iraq, it's supposed to be there. Once it starts happening in our own streets, you know,

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I was thinking, you know how many young people today were not around or not young enough or not old enough to even remember

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September 11th? It's scary. And I think we've become quite complacent.

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But then again, let's just be honest, there's a reason for that. And I think that just as just as this nation is so evil, the

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Planned Parenthood thing, oh my goodness, the memes I've seen on that, there have been some really good ones. But are we really all that surprised that the proprietors of the culture of death have no hearts?

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You know, they want to sell baby hearts because they have no hearts left themselves. When you murder babies every day, it destroys you.

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I mean, you can't you can't remain truly human. You're destroyed by it.

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It's it's it's just. And of course, we can't talk about good and evil, you know, that that may be troubling.

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That's it's very troubling. No, it's it's absolutely evil.

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And I don't know that there's anything that can be done about it because these people are ensconced in the very positions of power.

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What the Supreme Court did was evil as well. Not only Roe v. Wade, but in profaning marriage, there's a lot of there's a lot of evil going on and nobody wants to call it evil because, well, you're backwards and that that might offend people.

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It violates the greatest, you know, the greatest dogma of Western society. Thou shalt not call anything evil except for the calling of anything evil, if you know what

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I mean. Anyway, the you know, when you look at the

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Planned Parenthood stuff that's going on and the people profiting from the selling of baby parts and and just the the the stuff that would make

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Joseph Goebbels and and people like that just go. And you put us out.

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Well, of course, it was their underlings were put on trial. They committed suicide. But you put our people on trial.

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And just think how fast that's happened. It's been 70 years, 70 years since since the end of World War Two.

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And in 70 years now, we're the ones that are doing it now. We don't, you know. We do it much more cleanly and for much more money and for sexual freedom.

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But we still do it. And so back to why I started on this little tangent.

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We expect God to keep ISIS violence from our streets.

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On what basis? On what basis? I mean, we certainly pray that that God restrain evil.

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But at the same time, on what basis could anyone say that God should should extend the blessing of keeping the city streets of America safe, which, of course, they're not.

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I mean, you know, you go to places like Chicago and there's you know, there's wholesale genocide going on, racial genocide going on, being done by the same race to itself.

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And of course, I did see one meme that was talking about how many black babies have been killed, which, again, is just, you know, you can't talk about any of that stuff.

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Just no, no, no, can't can't talk about that stuff because it's it's uncomfortable, you know.

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And so anyway, but but what basis do you say, oh,

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Lord, keep us keep us safe when an unrepentant nation spits in God's face, it can't turn around and say, oh, and please keep our enemies out of our streets.

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Can't do it. That's the schizophrenia is is amazing.

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But again, we live in a society where people do not make any connection between moral and ethical behavior and its consequences.

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You know, we're we're autonomous humans. We can do whatever we want. Yeah. I saw the pictures of the

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SPs. I just didn't even want to didn't want to start thinking there.

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It's. Yeah. Anyway. So what

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I want to do is I would like to open the phones toward the end of the program. I'll tell you what,

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I'll I'll let folks know if you can start to tell if I'm if I'm getting close to being able to do that.

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I'm not sure that I'll get there. Depends on how things go here. But I think probably we'll be able to open the phone lines eventually toward the end of the program.

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But I do want to get through a few things. The past couple of days, there has been a major brouhaha brewing on social media.

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And in trying to sort of get a little bit of a handle on that brouhaha,

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I was directed to certain articles. Now, I was just thinking if I had seen these articles before the controversy erupted,

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I would have I would have commented on them in the same way

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I'm going to be doing so now. And I don't think that there would have been all that much controversy about what

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I would have to say. I mean, unfortunately, now what

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I see is such a massive amount of emotion that is just completely clouding the the catfights on Twitter and Facebook and everything else that I'm almost afraid to address this.

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But the reality is, I would have had some serious problems with this

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Christianity Today article even before knowing that it was a part of an element of this this argumentations going on and all the associated things going along with it.

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I guess I guess we're having some issues today. According to the channel, we're having major issues.

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So just thought I'd let you let you know since you don't go in there and everything looks really good here, huh?

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Okay. We're all fine here. Now. How are you? Yeah. Thank you. All indications are everything's wonderful.

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Everything's wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. I'm even getting it on my phone. You're even getting it on your phone. Well, that may be the problem.

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I'm interrupting. That one. We've got a phone feed. I can't handle it.

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That must be. That must be it. And it's all Micah's fault. He said it was.

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He said it was. It's. All right. What I'm talking about is the the article.

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That appeared in Christianity Today by Karen Swallow prior.

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And I was directed to this. And I was directed to this. And as I started reading it, you'll notice that the last time the only thing that I focused on was this paragraph, the social consequences of legalizing same sex marriage have yet to be seen.

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Currently, they comprise less than one half of one percent of all married couples in the country. And unlike abortion, gay marriage remains an act rooted in love.

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As Wesley Hill writes, even if we disagree with the expression of homosexuality, we can affirm the longing to be loved and belong.

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And I immediately said, I I'm sorry. I think this is one of the fundamental issues that we will be having to think through and clarify.

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And it's certainly an issue that I have addressed for years. And that is,

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I, I do not believe that it is appropriate for Christians to abandon a biblical definition of love.

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The profaning of marriage, which is what we're talking about, is not an act rooted in love.

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It is an act rooted in a selfish fulfillment of selfish desires. Now, it may have an object.

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But the problem is, it is not a husband, wife, wife, husband relationship.

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It cannot be by definition. And it is not rooted in Christian love.

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It is not it cannot be covenanted in the proper fashion. It is it can never be defined biblically.

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It can never exist within the parameters of of of a biblical husband and wife relationship.

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It does not show true concern for the other because it cannot it cannot produce life.

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It is not life affirming. It is it is self -destructive. It is narcissistic.

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It is the mirror image issue. There is no etzer conegdo. The whole issue of correspondence is gone and redefined on a on an autonomous humanistic basis.

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I mean, we've talked about all this stuff before. And so we I said, you know, this this concerns me.

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But there was more to it than that. The article went on to say some other things that, again,

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I wish this was the focus. And unfortunately,

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I think because of all the emotions and flame throwing and and grenade throwing and rifle fire and rumbling of tanks and so on and so forth, that the real issues are getting lost.

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I've I honestly have not seen any meaningful advancement of Christian thought on this subject as a result of this big brouhaha.

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I haven't I haven't seen it. That's a shame. Here's what it says. In the case of same sex marriage, our work is just beginning.

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This is just after talking about, hey, you know, Roe v. Wade's been around a long while. We're making progress.

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To be honest with you, I think the folks at Planned Parenthood realize that they have been set back two decades over the past two days, thankfully.

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If this nation had anything less than an absolutely seared conscience, and if there was not the absolute judgment of God upon this nation, what happened in the past would be enough to end the existence of Planned Parenthood as an organization.

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But it won't be. In fact, I predict there will be almost no meaningful long term result from this.

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I'm sorry, but I I look at the American electorate, I look at how what their attention span is and the depth of their thinking.

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And I go. What can I say? Anyways, that's what's being said, and it says in the case of same sex marriage, our work is just beginning.

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We must now repent of the injustices we have perpetrated on LGBT people.

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Now, again, I absolutely insist that we must challenge the unaccepted use of that acronym.

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The disorder from a biblical perspective represented by each of those letters in the acronym is different.

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It's different. It manifests differently. You have to approach it differently, pastorally, theologically, sociologically, everything.

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I mean, bisexuality, transgenderism. This is just simply a group of disordered, unbiblical sexual desires crammed together in creating a community.

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How is it Christian or even loving toward these people to not challenge the creation of a community based upon rebellion of what is best for anyone creatively and prescriptively by God's law?

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How is that? I don't get it. I'll I'll. I don't get it. But repent of the injustices we have perpetrated on LGBT people.

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I'd like to know what these are because I know what this group says it is.

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You've you've called us sinners. Yeah, we've actually called everybody sinners and identified homosexuality as sin.

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Excommunicated people. Well, that really looks weird. What are you doing in there? You're playing around with camera angles, aren't you?

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Don't throw me curves. I'm busy here. Let's just stick with the normal stuff and don't don't throw me curves.

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Um, we've not allowed people who are unrepentant sinners to have leadership positions in the church.

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What what exactly what injustices have we done? Because see what the LGBT people, what the affirming people are saying is that you've done injustice by denying marriage to us.

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Remember, this was really, really, really new thing. But you've you've done us injustice by denying us all these uber rights and marriage and adoption.

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And I'm sorry, but if that's what this is about, I'm I'm in shock in light of everything else that's been said about the perspectives of this person, so on and so forth.

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So what injustices are we talking about? We're not told. We're not told perpetrated. Sounds like we're we've just been guilty of really bad things.

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Now there are all sorts of of people who are ignorant of what the

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Bible teaches or use the Bible as a reason for hatred. Hopefully that's not what's being talked about here, because we what what who is the we here?

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You know, I don't know. Not only is such mistreatment, whatever it is wrong, but in a bit of cosmic irony, it played a significant role in galvanizing social momentum toward acceptance of gay marriage.

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Now, I've I mentioned when I got back from Utah that I had read the entire

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Supreme Court decision. The majority opinion was a mishmash of frighteningly childish, emotionally driven drivel.

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I lost all respect. I'm sorry. I had no respect for Kagan and Sotomayor to begin with, especially

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Kagan, given she should never have been on the court in the first place and especially should never been dealing with this subject at all.

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Given her past. I mean, that's the only reason she was put there. There's I don't think there's any question about that at all. I don't know how anyone could argue that.

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Just look what she did as the head of that college anyways. But I lost every bit of every shred of respect for Kennedy.

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The the argumentation was so touchy feely. Well, what about children of gay families?

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So they'll be made to feel bad as if this is a basis for redefining the entirety of marriage.

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It was it was shocking in its in its essence. But here we're going to have a citation of some of the worst of that argumentation.

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Obergefell versus Hodges mentions injustice as part of its rationale for legalizing gay marriage.

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Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority state, especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships.

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This denial of the right of same sex couples to marry works a grave and continuing harm serving to disrespect the subordinate gays and lesbians.

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How else? I'm sorry. Part of the brouhaha has been over defining what affirming or non affirming is.

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This is affirming language. It may be very poorly expressed by the author here because she says

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I'm not. But if you quote this, this argumentation, you're saying that the injustice that the church has done is disapproving of homosexual relationships.

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What's the only possible conclusion that we should approve of these relationships?

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I mean, at the very least, at the very least,

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Dr. Pryor should recognize that she has not been clear and has been very confusing.

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If you if you have been reading, which most of you haven't and don't want to, as I don't want to, but I do, if you've been reading the quote unquote gay

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Christian propaganda for years now, it's like, sounds familiar.

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So how do you put together injustices we have perpetrated on LGBT people, mistreatment, and then you quote long history of disapproval of their relationships.

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Serving to disrespect and subordinate gays and lesbians. Do you believe that gays and lesbians, when it comes to the issue of marriage and relationship, that that should not be subordinated to a true

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God honored marriage between a man and a woman? If you're saying the two men and two women together is equal to a man and a woman, which is what which is what the gay affirming position is, how is that not an affirming position?

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I'm confused. I'm confused. And I read this as a person.

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Don't make me start quoting the books I've read. I don't even want some of them. Thankfully, I've forgotten.

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Well, actually, I was reminded a lot of them, as we're going to see in this next article I'm going to look at by Graham Codrington.

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It was reminding me of some of those books. Anyways, the sense of injustice among LGBT Americans did not emerge ex nihilo.

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Well, the question is, is it, from a

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Christian worldview, appropriate to say that there has been injustice toward a community based upon disordered desires and that that injustice involves disapproval?

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So in other words, hasn't the Supreme Court laid the foundation for identifying the

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Christian view of these things forever enshrined in First Corinthians six, nine through 11 as bigotry, bias, injustice?

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And how is this? How is this not correcting that it's not correcting that seems to be agreeing with it.

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It came from real discrimination often carried out in the name of Christ discrimination.

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There it is. How many times have I said you have to define what the word means.

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We discriminate every single day. If your church has a profession of faith, a confession of faith, a confessional document, it discriminates.

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It must. We discriminate against Unitarians. Jehovah's Witnesses cannot join my church, and that is a good and right thing.

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And it is a good and right thing to identify homosexual behavior as destructive of human flourishing.

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That is a good and right thing. So I discriminated against things when

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I had children that would be destructive of my children's well -being. That's called being a parent.

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And speaking about what is sin and destructive of human life is the duty of the church of Jesus Christ.

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It came from real discrimination often carried out in the name of Christ as Mark Galley wisely wrote for Christianity Today.

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What actions and attitudes have we imbibed that contribute to our cultures dismissing our ethics?

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Now, if we're living in a culture under the wrath of God, don't you think it's time to stop thinking that the primary problem is the church of Jesus Christ?

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What attitudes did the prophet Elijah imbibe that contributed to Israel's culture dismissing

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Elijah's ethics? Our homophobia has revealed our fear and prejudice.

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Our what? Our what? Homophobia?

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Could someone finally define this? I'm not afraid of men. And identifying homosexuality as a sin is not an irrational fear of fellow men.

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Our homophobia, biblical inconsistency, our passion to root out sexual sins while relatively indifferent to racism, gluttony and other sins.

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This is the gay Christian meme. Oh, well you all don't talk about gluttony and you don't talk about racism and other sins and so therefore you're just picking on the gays.

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When organizations have arisen that try to defend racism, the church has attacked those things.

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If there was a Christian gluttons society, the church would speak to it.

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But there is a gay Christian movement and it has a tremendous amount of money, a tremendous amount of money.

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And so we have to address it. But this is a quotation of the gay

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Christian perspective being positively presented in this article. And long before all the started in Twitter with the pulpit and pan article,

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I would have looked at this and gone, whoa, what is this all about?

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What's going on here? Opens us the charge of hypocrisy.

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Before we spend too much more time trying to straighten out the American neighborhood, we might get our own house in order.

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I'm sorry, but Mr. Galley has completely missed the forest for the trees. Completely missed the forest for the trees.

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Our house, going back to Dr. Pryor, our house has long been out of order.

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As a result, we no longer live in a society that esteems the sexual and spiritual union of male and female as essential.

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So that's the church's fault. Is that what you're saying? It's the church's fault that our society, that we live in a society that esteems the sexual and spiritual union of male and female does not see it as essential.

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When did the church begin to engage in promoting transgenderism?

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And again, I guess we need to define the church. Because we're just using these wonderful plural pronouns here.

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Don't we have to differentiate between the believing church that takes the

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Bible seriously and the mainstream Protestant denominations that have not taken the

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Bible seriously for decades on end? And I don't think it's because the church is promoting transgenderism that the society is doing this.

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I think it's a judgment of God. But we have not lived in such a society for a long time.

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Both Roe, you know, I really wish, I mean,

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Obergefell, Roe is easy. Obergefell is not going to, someone needs to come up with a different name, represent the logical outcomes of ongoing cultural change, ongoing cultural change.

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I'm sorry, but this article does not strike me as coming from a consistently applied

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Christian worldview. You've got a dichotomy here that does not see that what is happening, that cultural changes are theological things.

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There doesn't seem to be any sense of the judgment of God upon a culture. There doesn't seem to be a, it just speaks and breathes of a sub -biblical perspective.

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I would have identified that long before this happened if I had ever seen it. I do not read Christianity Today.

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Life is too short. Today, and then you have, here's the, here's a few things again.

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The abortion rate among Protestant women is slightly higher than the overall rate. Protestant women? Who's that?

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Is that all non -Catholics? So that includes the mainstreams?

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The United Methodists, PCUSA, UCC, doesn't that make that completely 1 ,000 % irrelevant?

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It certainly seems so. Cohabitation rather than marriage is the new normal. What does that have to do with the church?

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Except when the church does not, if you're part of a church that will allow an unmarried couple to come in and just sit there without ever being challenged and partake the

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Lord's Supper and so on and so forth, okay, then this has to do with you. I don't know of very many,

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I don't know of any sound true churches that knowing that would just go, oh, it's okay, you know.

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Over 40 % of U .S. births are to unmarried mothers. Yeah, we live in a secularized society that's spitting in God's face.

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What does this have to do with the church engaging in perpetrating injustices upon a community self -identified by various disordered sexual desires?

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I'm absolutely lost as to what the thinking is here.

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Between 40 and 50 % of married people in the United States divorce, the divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher. There would be no gay marriage if there had not been no -fault divorce and, again, a fundamental degradation of view of marriage.

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All this stuff. I'm just sitting here going, all right, but the conclusion then is, these numbers remind us that gay marriage is but one characteristic and a statistically insignificant one at that of a culture whose understanding of sex and marriage has long been unmoored from biblical principles.

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Okay, there's truth in error. The truth is, this is a culture whose understanding of sex and marriage has long been unmoored from biblical principles.

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No question about it. But the profaning of marriage in the redefinition is far more radical than anything else listed in that list would indicate.

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This is, you've got to recognize that this goes far beyond anything else.

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This is a break of historic proportions because it places the culture in the position of purposefully, knowingly elevating human autonomy to the point where there is absolutely no basis for even beginning to define morality, any type of normative basis upon which human society can flourish.

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This is a rebellion, a knowing, purposeful, God, get out of here, we've always believed this and now we say we've always been bigots.

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This is something completely different. Something completely different. So, truth in error.

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It finishes up by saying, while public policy and legal experts debate the recent decision and the ramifications of people of faith, our most meaningful response as Christians will come from our daily lives.

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We witness through how we love our God, our church, our spouses, and all our neighbors. That sounds wonderful, but the reality is we have to take a stand.

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And it is not loving to a neighbor to not be able to explain to them why

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Jesus taught what he did in Matthew chapter 19. That's not loving to our neighbor.

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It's not loving to our neighbor when we have the opportunity to warn them against behaviors that will be self -destructive and lead to death, not to life.

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I mean, I don't know what's being said here. I mean, how can you argue with love God, love your church, love your spouse, love your neighbor?

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And then Mr. Rogers walked out of the house. You can't argue with that. But what does that mean?

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That doesn't give any guidance as to what we're supposed to be doing. And it doesn't address the reality that we face a situation where we must know why we believe what we believe.

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And we must know why marriage is between a man and a woman. Why it's a covenantal lifelong relationship and that the breaking of it is destructive to everyone involved.

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And the redefining of it is an absolute act of rebellion. We have to know why that is and be able to explain it.

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So I would have been very troubled by this article had

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I seen it. Before all of the brouhaha developed, really would have been.

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But there's some of the reasons for my being troubled by it. The language, if that's all

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I read, if that was and Dr. Pryor directed me to this.

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So evidently she believes it represents her position. I would consider at the very least the author of this to be minimally in the middle and to be thoroughly compromised on important elements of this issue.

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Even before all the rest of this stuff exploded. And there's why. There's why.

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So there you go. Now I move from that to an individual about whom there is no question whatsoever on this subject.

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And that is Graham Codrington down in South Africa. Now I'm going to tell you right now what

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I'm concerned about. I got confirmation that Mr.

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Codrington wants to debate gay Christianity when we go to South Africa.

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And I want to do it as well. And we've proven that we can do that in an appropriate, proper fashion. I am concerned that there is going to be so much pressure put upon him to not do this that it won't happen.

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And the reason is real simple. The people on that side of this issue recognize that actually their position has been moved forward not through logical, rational, biblical argumentation, but through emotions and memes and social media and social pressure and shouting down and shutting up the other side.

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They know that. And so they don't want to give the opportunity for people to have both sides laid out there side by side and especially to hear the cross -examination.

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Now Mr. Codrington is a professional speaker. So he will not be sitting there going, uh, there aren't going to be any gotcha moments.

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The gentleman will be very well prepared. But the point is there will be a focus upon what's really meaningful.

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And even someone who is a professional speaker, when they are asked questions for which they do not have a consistent answer, those who are really listening will be able to see that.

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And that's the fear. So I'm very concerned that there will be pressure brought to bear and possibly result in this not happening.

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I would appreciate your prayers that it will happen because I would like to see it happen. I posted on, um, man,

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I'm getting all sorts of stuff in, uh, in Twitter that while, while trying to, uh, yeah, homophobia refers to treating gay people badly, not to fearing them.

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Uh, really that's a, so words don't have meanings.

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Tombox sent me a, sent me a tweet to, uh, Shirley Ann McMillan saying homophobia refers to treating gay people badly, not to fearing them.

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So they even get to have special words. What is, what is the term for treating

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Christians badly? Would that be Christophobia? I prefer to actually utilize words that have meaning.

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Um, what does badly mean? You mean disagreeing with, right?

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That seems to be the issue. Um, and it seems to be that, that simply disagreeing with a homosexual is treating them badly.

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That's that's the problem. Um, anyway, Graham Codrington has a website future church now .com

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and he posted an article called don't stop now. It's not enough for churches to just welcome gay people.

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And here's where, this is why this debate needs to take place. And here you go. The last few weeks since Supreme Court in America approved same sex marriage and Ireland voted to do the same, there's been a lot of conversation, okay, mainly argument on all forums and social media platforms, rightly so.

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This is a massive shift in society. Some people have asked me why I've made such a big deal of it and why

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I am pushing the issue so hard. The reason is simple. Now listen to the background here. I grew up in a very conservative part of the

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Christian tradition. I was taught that I was part of a chosen group who were going to live in paradise and everyone else was hated by God and would suffer for eternity.

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If you don't think about too much, there's comfort in being part of the chosen. When you apply your mind to it, though, it's a horrifying mindset.

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It actively creates us versus them divides at every level. Now, institutional politicized political

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Calvinism can be an ugly thing. And if the history of reformed churches in the

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Netherlands, for example, teaches us anything, it teaches us that a theology that emphasizes election without the balanced biblical element of conversion and repentance from sin becomes an ugly caricature that is damaging to everyone who experiences it.

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The Christian faith, the believing biblical gospel is not genetically passed on.

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If you do not call your children to repentance and faith, this will be the result right here.

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This will be the result right here. We see it in Europe. There is no such thing as generational

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Christianity. Never has been, never will be. Here you hear him saying, when you apply your mind to it, though, it's a horrifying mindset.

41:32

It actively creates us versus them divides at every level. Now, just stop for a second. There are inappropriate us versus them divides.

41:43

There are inappropriate us versus them divides. But you cannot tell me that there are not biblical us versus them divides.

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The teaching of Jesus is filled with discussions of us versus them, filled with light versus darkness, the children of God and the children of the evil one.

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There's us versus them all over the place, but it's primarily a repentant versus non -repentant people.

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When reformed theology, when it is, how do

42:30

I express this? The unregenerate detest

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God's truth, whether it's presented to them partially, fully, whether it's twisted, whatever else it is, there's going to be rebellion against it.

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Now, just because this man rejects reformed theology, you know, we can say, well, it wasn't presented to him properly.

42:54

But the reality is any unregenerate person will eventually respond negatively to the proclamation of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ.

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It must happen that the gospel is going to have that result. This is

43:13

I go on. This is not what I see in the life and teachings of Jesus, who stands at the center of my religion I see someone who breaks down these us versus them divides at every opportunity, does it across all sorts of lines, race, culture, economic status, politics, religion, and sexuality.

43:29

What you have here, and again, some of you may have not seen this program before, maybe not familiar with the dividing line, but we've been talking about this for a very, very, very, very, very long time.

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What you have in so much modern quote unquote Christianity is designer

43:48

Jesusism. You come up with a

43:53

Jesus that amazingly looks like you and talks like you and has the same political views you do.

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And then you say, this is the center of my religion. Well, again, in some senses,

44:15

Jesus broke down us versus them divides. Certainly, the

44:22

Pharisees had the, yeah, and I was silly to think that I'd get done with this by this point in time to open the phone lines, but as long as it takes.

44:38

When it comes to Pharisees, the Pharisees, we know from extra biblical writings and sources, looked at the

44:45

Amhaaretz, the Amhaaretz, the people of the land. And we see in the

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New Testament that they looked down upon these people, and these people were not worthy of God's blessing, and they, the

44:59

Pharisees, had God's blessing because they did this, that, and the other thing. Jesus broke down that us, them divide.

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Why? Because it was not based upon any type of biblical basis. It was, in fact, in contrast to the teachings of the prophets and so on and so forth.

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But he did not break down, for example, us versus them divides on religion.

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Where did Jesus say anything that would say that, you know what, Judaism's good, but, you know,

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Buddhism's okay too, and Zoroastrianism, or, you know, whatever, the

45:41

Assyrian gods, Babylonian gods, we just need to put all this stuff aside and love one another. Jesus didn't do that.

45:47

Jesus did not do that. Sexuality? Read John 4 recently?

45:55

Yeah, you've had five. Oh, I perceive you're a prophet. Hmm. Seems Jesus had the same sexual ethics in Matthew 19 as the

46:05

Bible taught. He didn't break down any divides there. In fact, he built it up higher than, because the

46:11

Jews have been chipping at it. Well, you can divorce your wife for any reason. Oh, no, you can't. And here's why.

46:18

So, sorry, doesn't work there. So now the church is confronted by such a radical shift in societal norms, which

46:27

Christians should look at from a biblical perspective and not from a secular perspective.

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We have an opportunity to reform our churches too. So the church is to be reformed based upon radical shifts in societal norms.

46:49

This is not a biblical definition of the church. Who reforms the church?

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I thought Christ did that by his Spirit. So are you saying that these moves in the society are a move of the

47:02

Spirit of God and not abject, clear, obvious rebellion against God's Word?

47:10

Hmm. Something tells me that Mr. Codrington and I have very different views of the normative nature of Scripture and probably the meaning of terms like inspiration, consistency.

47:27

Have a feeling. Have a feeling. It's a key moment in history and we must grasp it.

47:35

It is incredibly hard for someone who has grown up their whole life not just believing that homosexuality is a sin, but also that gay people are actually disgusting and despised by God to see what is now happening around the world.

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Disgusting and despised by God. That's every sinner.

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That's what Isaiah recognized about himself. Woe is me for I am undone.

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Is that not what the psalmist says about himself in his sin?

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That he is despised and despicable and a worm and under the wrath of God and, hmm, isn't that a biblical view of all sinners before God?

48:28

Not in the quote unquote red letter Christianity. I get the feeling because he specifically in another article mentions, and in fact let me grab it here, my friend

48:47

Brian McLaren has helpfully grouped these books into three categories. So you've got the red letter,

48:55

I don't actually believe the Bible, I make up my own Jesus and then read the rest of the Bible through that lens, get rid of everything

49:01

I don't want kind of rabid liberalism that, you know, that's the only way you can get around biblical sexual ethics is you've got to get rid of parts of the

49:13

Bible in the process. So acceptance of homosexuality as normal must be incredibly difficult and for some a sign of how badly messed up the world is.

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Well, that's one sentence that I actually don't disagree with. Yes, it is a sign of how badly messed up the world is.

49:35

It is wonderful to see some of these people beginning to confront their personal distaste of the gay lifestyle and argue for a church should be accepting of homosexuals and welcoming.

49:45

What is the gay lifestyle? I thought the whole thing here,

49:52

Matthew Vines and Justin Lee and Dr. Gushy, I thought the whole thing was that what we are supposed to be welcoming and affirming of is that small little percentage of people who want to have monogamous, lifelong, covenanted, loving relationships, which is not the vast majority of the homosexual community, whatever that is.

50:23

So I'm confused because I've seen the gay lifestyle on the net.

50:30

I've seen the gay pride parades and you're not telling us we're supposed to be affirming that and welcoming that, are you?

50:38

So what's the gay lifestyle? You don't have distaste when you see a five -year -old boy wearing mini shorts and nothing else with his hair styled in rainbow colors, twerking in front of people, you don't find that distasteful?

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Okay, I won't use the term distasteful. That is evil. That's not just distasteful.

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I find Mr. Pibb distasteful, okay? Dr. Pepper and Mr.

51:17

Pibb, aren't they the same thing? Sort of. Different manufacturers. I find both of them distasteful.

51:24

I find the other absolutely, abjectly evil. There's a difference. So the church is to be accepting of homosexuals and welcoming.

51:37

What does that mean? That's an important and necessary first step, but it's not enough, not nearly enough.

51:45

I told you folks, we've been saying for decades, it's not going to stop with quote unquote acceptance.

51:56

And here you go. It's another, we told you so, we told you so.

52:04

For those who believe that the Bible affirms same -sex marriage, we, so that's obviously

52:10

Mr. Codrington, cannot stop and applaud this halfway step. It is going to bring more pain and suffering very soon if you believe that being gay is a sin in itself.

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So in other words, if you believe what Christians have believed from the beginning consistently, all the way down through history until just the past generation or so, then you are only going to find pain in a church.

52:36

And churches that welcome gays, but still believe that being gay is sinful are going to cause deep and abiding harm to people.

52:43

Homosexuals who attend those churches will be second -class citizens, will be prohibited from leading, serving, exercising their spiritual gifts and calling, they'll be broken down, not built up.

52:51

So Mr. Codrington's perspective here is there is no room for the opposition.

52:57

The other side must be completely eradicated. So in other words, those who used to be arguing for tolerance are now arguing for absolute intolerance.

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We've been from the beginning saying there is no room for tolerance because there is no room for rejecting the

53:17

Lordship of Jesus Christ. We will not be tolerant of anyone who claims to stand in the place of Jesus in the church.

53:26

Intolerance for that must be, has to be. Now we see the other side has always been just as intolerant and their goals are just as intolerant as well.

53:38

Now again, there's a problem. The problem here is that what is being gay?

53:52

Go back and listen to the conversation I had with Justin Lee. This is one of the big issues.

54:01

There's a difference between experiencing same -sex attraction, acting on same -sex attraction, and embracing same -sex attraction as something that can actually define who you are as a human being.

54:17

There's a spectrum there. And there are people who experience same -sex attraction who recognize that it is displeasing before God and desire to live under the

54:31

Lordship of Christ and desire to not act upon those desires. Just as there are people who have horrific tempers and they desire to have that controlled by the

54:44

Spirit of God. You want to talk about gluttony? Yeah, there are people who absolutely abuse their bodies and they desire to not do that.

54:56

And they find discipline to take care of the body that's been given to them. There are people who want other people's properties.

55:04

There are swindlers. The term is used in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. There are people who are disobedient. There are people, now this is shocking, some of you might not know this.

55:15

But there are people who use the internet to gossip. I know.

55:22

I know. No one knew. Yes. But the vast, the chasm that exists, the chasm that exists between people who experience these things and then those who take these things and self -identify by them and demand that we all celebrate it.

55:46

There's a chasm between those two. And it's pretty much only the homosexual that tries to bridge that chasm.

55:55

Pretty much only. I can't think of anybody else. I really can't.

56:01

I mean, you've got false prophets and false teachers that are clearly out to get people's money that I guess would be

56:09

Christian swindlers. But we all recognize they're not actually Christians. But now we're being told.

56:15

But this is the one exception. This is the one exception. Well, one exception for now.

56:22

Once you've got that one in, then you start working on the other exceptions that go from there. At least,

56:28

I continue back with Codrington, at least if you want to be welcoming to sinners, then you have to distinguish between the orientation to sin and the actual act of sinning, okay?

56:41

I am oriented to murder and adultery and pride and theft and greed and drunkenness. Well, not in the way a homosexual says they are.

56:52

But the church could and should only get involved when I act out on any of these. Really? The church should not preach against murder, adultery, pride, theft, greed, and drunkenness until you act out on them?

57:09

I mean, if you come walking in and identify yourself as a murderous Christian, we should go, cool. As long as you don't kill any of us, we won't say anything about it.

57:18

I mean, Mr. Codrington, did you think this through? Really? Before you wrote it?

57:25

You don't mean this. So to the homosexuals, if you believe it to be a sin, if they choose to be celibate, now why would they do that?

57:38

Because they too recognize it's a sin? Then they should be fully accepted as full church members and be able to fully serve in any position and exercise any gift in the life of the church.

57:49

They don't have to stop being gay, they just have to stop doing gay. So here again is where the definition of gay, see

57:57

Justin Lee would agree with this definition of gay. Because the experience of same -sex attraction makes you gay.

58:06

The Christians that I know of that I've talked to who experience same -sex attraction won't go there.

58:12

They will not identify themselves in that way. They will only self -identify by Christ, not by their attractions.

58:21

And so quote -unquote choosing to be celibate is just simply a, it's just as false a dichotomy and misleading a phrase as marriage equality was.

58:32

Marriage equality was a lie. It was marriage redefinition. But it won because people don't think it through.

58:38

Here celibacy is not celibacy. It is not committing a specific sin described in scripture.

58:49

But see we let them get away with this kind of thing. And when we as Christians use that language, it's like, you know, going in a battle and as you're running toward the enemy, shooting yourself in the leg.

59:02

It's not going to make you any more effective. It might get you a purple heart, but it's not gonna make any more effective.

59:16

Having said that, those of us who believe that doing gay is not a sin. Now listen to this.

59:21

You want, you want, we're gonna go a little long. As long, here's, here's where just as the atheist has to borrow from the

59:33

Christian worldview to prop his up and to keep, keep the thing from falling apart. There is no consistent gay

59:42

Christian position. Remember when Gushy at the end of his talk started talking about monogamy and faithfulness and the applause was not quite so good, you know, and I, and I'm going, why monogamy given what you said?

01:00:02

Why monogamy? Because the two is husband and wife based upon male and female.

01:00:11

Once you get rid of the God ordained, God created gender binary, which

01:00:20

Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 19, once you get rid of that, there's no reason for two.

01:00:27

That's why you can have three or four or five or whatever. What we're gonna see here is the quote unquote gay

01:00:37

Christian position collapses. It can not give a consistent theological basis.

01:00:46

It's just a stopgap. That's all it is. It's just, let's, let's put something together here to make it look like there's a third way while we seek to actually destroy faithful Christian churches.

01:00:56

That's what it's all about. I mean, that's the 30 years from now. Look back on this and go, Oh, you're right.

01:01:02

That's how it works. Having said that, those of us who believe that doing gay is not a sin, as long as we stick to the rules around sex being only for marriage, the rules around sex being only for marriage, what rules might those be?

01:01:25

Mr. Codrington, because any rule you're going to point me to, any rule about sex being only for marriage in the

01:01:36

Bible is about a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

01:01:42

And those words have meaning in the Bible. We might be trying to destroy them in our society, but they have meaning in the Bible. They do not have, they may not have meaning in your worldview, but they have meaning in ours.

01:01:51

And so what rules? How can you define adultery now?

01:01:58

How can you define pornia? You've redefined the category should push even so those of us.

01:02:11

So those people who believe that doing gay is not sin should push even further to make sure our

01:02:19

LGBT brothers and sisters find a place at church that allows them to be fully human, finding love, finding lifelong companionship and enjoying the intimacy of sex within marriage.

01:02:34

Until this happens, they're not really going to be free. Ah, there you go. Let's start the,

01:02:42

I need a, I need a music soundtrack, um, to Born Free.

01:02:47

You know, uh, let's start the, the beautiful images and, you know, I'm not gonna sing it for now.

01:02:54

I can, but I'm not going to. Um, and of course the, the, the thing, of course that we, we may want to go really,

01:03:04

I mean, let's, let's really get the emotions going here, but Mr.

01:03:10

Codrington, why one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is what you're actually doing is you're placing people in slavery to death and slavery to death.

01:03:24

And I think every single homosexual pair that pretends marriage at some point in time, maybe in the middle of the night, maybe when they're alone with their own thoughts, they're not having to perform for the audience.

01:03:54

They're not having to do anything other than be honest with themselves, stand at a window and they look out and they see a husband and a wife walking down the street with their children.

01:04:14

And they know, they know within themselves, there's a moment when they stop suppressing, they stop holding down that truth and they know within themselves, it's all a lie.

01:04:30

I have been lied to, and I've lied to myself. I've lied to this other and you want despair.

01:04:43

People say, you, you people, you're causing suicides. I say to you, those of you who are promoting homosexuality as a moral good, you are the ones that are promoting that despair.

01:04:55

God did not design us to be that way. You want freedom? It's not in giving in.

01:05:03

It's not in giving in and defining yourself by these things. They're not really going to be free.

01:05:18

For those who are now more comfortable being for the gays, please don't stop yet.

01:05:24

We have to help our fellow Christians, I guess that's the rest of us, continue to walk the journey from loving the sinner but hating the sin to welcoming the gay sinners to affirming a gay orientation, orientation onwards to celebrating gay marriage.

01:05:42

What have I told you? Long before they would use that language, we were telling you they will not stop with acceptance or toleration.

01:05:55

We must celebrate. We must say it's good. And here it is, onwards to celebrating gay marriage, which should just be called marriage.

01:06:08

See, we can't even define marriage biblically any longer.

01:06:14

Not even allowed to. And supporting and discipling all people who call themselves

01:06:20

Christ followers. How do you disciple some? What's the basis of this? You've thrown the Bible right out the, right out the door, right out the window.

01:06:28

So what's the basis of discipleship? Who call themselves

01:06:33

Christ followers with no discussion or concern over sexual orientation. Can't talk about it.

01:06:40

Does this include? Well, we're not allowed to say this according to Matthew Vines, but when you disciple someone, should you just tell them that they can ignore

01:06:52

Leviticus and we don't have to? Yeah, I know Jesus said second greatest commandments there.

01:06:57

I know there's all this stuff about honoring father and mother and doing justice.

01:07:03

But it's right there in Leviticus. It talks about sexual orientation.

01:07:09

It talks about incest. And it talks about bestiality. And it talks about all that stuff right there next to homosexuality.

01:07:16

And you're saying we no discussion or concern over sexual orientation. We can't talk about. Oh, but then in parentheses.

01:07:26

Well, still having things to say about sexual behavior. Again, you can't, you can't hold this stuff together.

01:07:37

Not with any level of consistency. While still having things to say about sexual behavior, you're, you've already thrown out having anything to say about sexual behavior.

01:07:49

You can't derive it from the Bible. Your only source left is whatever society says.

01:07:55

So once society says that polyamory, adultery is good, it's okay, fine.

01:08:04

From your viewpoint and what you said here, shouldn't talk about that either. Shouldn't talk about that either.

01:08:13

Don't stop now. Don't stop here. There's still a long path ahead. And don't be fooled by the untenable positions of love the sinner, but hate the sin.

01:08:20

As long as you still think homosexuality is a sin. As long as you still believe what

01:08:28

Christians have always believed. And is the only tenable exegetical position.

01:08:34

If you believe all the Bible teaches. It would be better that you sent gay people away from your church to go worship somewhere else.

01:08:40

You're just going to hurt them even more. And he says, over the next few weeks in this blog,

01:08:47

I will upload some resources. I hope will help those Christians who are genuinely seeking truth on this issue. Ah, so if we don't agree with your side, we're not genuinely seeking truth.

01:08:57

Well, we'll find out. We'll find out. We cannot underestimate the difficulty of changing one's core beliefs and long -held views.

01:09:05

Remember, that's what they want. This is a fundamental attack upon the core beliefs of the

01:09:13

Christian faith. They're admitting it. They're admitting it. We need to support people and disciple them gently and compassionately.

01:09:21

And I hope that I can do that just a little bit. And then he has since then posted, as I mentioned, another article,

01:09:31

Best Books to Read on Christians, the Bible, and Homosexuality. Of course, there's nothing here from the other side.

01:09:37

Absolutely nothing. There's no balance here at all. But some of the worst books on the subject are listed here.

01:09:48

Boswell is listed here. Boswell is horrible. Daniel Helminiak is here. It's misspelled, but Daniel Helminiak is here.

01:09:55

Horrible. Horrible book. Just full of errors. Biblical. Every kind.

01:10:01

Every kind. So, yeah, you know, Mel White is in here. I mean, there's a lot of really, you know,

01:10:09

Gene Robinson. Lots of really, really bad stuff. Skenzonian Mallincott.

01:10:18

But you won't hear anything about the other side at all. There's no representation of the other side at all. So there's

01:10:23

Graham Codrington. There's his article. There's the radical perspective.

01:10:29

Now, let me just make a comment. There is a vast difference, obviously and plainly, between the two articles that I just reviewed.

01:10:43

One is open, clear, unafraid to announce exactly where they're going.

01:10:54

We've got a, it's, you know, radical. No, no,

01:11:00

I went way too long. So no, no. One is very, very straightforward.

01:11:09

The other is confused. The other is representative of what we're going to be seeing more and more amongst those who will continue to identify as evangelicals.

01:11:28

But who, either out of just emotion, out of personal relationships, out of whatever, lack of training in apologetics, logical thought, whatever, you can identify all sorts of things.

01:11:48

Who end up saying things and taking positions that fundamentally compromise a truly consistent biblical position.

01:12:01

While they think they're actually trying to be compassionate. There's a difference between the two.

01:12:11

And what we try to do in this program is, you know, we read the articles.

01:12:17

We play the videos. We, whatever. We try to be accurate in what we're saying and lay it out there and examine it.

01:12:31

And hopefully this has been helpful to you today. I don't, you know, the last program was extremely eclectic.

01:12:39

We talked about all sorts of things. I mean, if you're talking Griffith's book on the

01:12:45

Bible and Arabic and his comments and Surah 5, verse 116 in the Quran, as well as these other things.

01:12:50

Yeah, it's pretty eclectic. But today we focused on just one thing because, well, we're facing a society that is making this the key issue.

01:13:01

And so we need to think it through and to think it through carefully.

01:13:07

If for no other reason that we want to honor Christ and honor his gospel.

01:13:14

But also we want to be effective and consistent in communicating with those around us. So hope this has been of assistance to you and useful to you.

01:13:24

Not sure what next week's going to bring because I'm going to be in Colorado again. So but if obviously some big comes up, we'll find a way to get back together with you.

01:13:36

But I'm here all of August. Let's put it that way. So we'll be back in the dividing line sometime in the future.