Prepare for Gay Marriage [Warning]

I hate writing about this subject, but with both French and British parliaments passing gay marriage laws in the past week, we’re reaching a no-turning-back point in our world. God is sovereign and specializes in last minute rescues, but barring a Mordecai-type intervention we might as well face up to the reality that gay marriage is coming down the pike at an unstoppable speed, and it’s going to impact many Christians in damaging and even destructive ways. While continuing to pray, preach, and campaign against this (read these nine words again), we must also ask how we can prepare for the collision in such a way that minimizes the carnage.

1. Prepare our children
Most of us try to protect our children from sexual information until they are mature enough to handle it, without delaying so much that they end up hearing it first from someone else. We also want to lay a solid foundation of teaching them about God’s beautiful design for sexual relationships before eventually explaining the various perversions of God’s order.

That privilege – of waiting until our children are old enough and of presenting the beautiful before the ugly – will be increasingly denied us by the normalization and display of homosexuality in the media, in schools, and in the malls. This is going to be tough, but we will have to teach our children much earlier and about much more than we would ordinarily choose.

2. Prepare to love
Though Christians are often accused of hating homosexuals, homosexuals harbor far more hate for Christians than vice versa. They really do hate us in a way I’ve never seen in any other group – way more than radical Muslims or even the secular humanist and communist groups of the 1970′s to 1990′s, and that’s saying something. They are our self-declared enemies and want to see our beliefs, words, and actions criminalized. They want to shut down our businesses, render Christians unemployable, and incarcerate our preachers.

That’s going to be one of the hardest things we will ever do, as most of us will never have encountered such personal enmity from anyone. But we must beg for the spirit of Christ, who prayed, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” We must graciously and gently good-news them and good-deed them, while being unflinching in our moral convictions.

We don’t need to prove our spiritual manhood by condemning homosexuality in every sermon and prayer. Keep the focus on the saving love of Christ, no matter how tempting it is to get into constant condemnation mode. Remember, there are probably homosexuals in most of our congregations. Try to win them, not beat them.

3. Prepare for jail
I doubt most politicians really want lots of otherwise law-abiding citizens jailed for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, or for preaching that homosexuality is wrong. Many do, however, want to create a climate of intimidation that will deter Christians from doing such things. If the UK pattern is a model – and it looks as if US campaigners are using the same playbook – they will pass “hate-crime” legislation, press charges against us, shame us in the media, stigmatize our businesses and churches, threaten us with the loss of our children, and impose substantial fines, all in the hope to scare us into silence. But when none of these things move us, the legal penalties will intensify until eventually some of us, maybe many of us, will end up going to prison for it. We’d better get ready for that inevitable reality.

4. Prepare for betrayal
This is going to be a sifting time. Some Christians will cave. Prominent preachers will compromise. Famous Christians will distance themselves from believers who have fallen foul of homosexual campaigners. “What’s the point in going to jail? We can still preach the Gospel without ever mentioning homosexuality. We must be wise….etc.” There will be major Judas-type disappointments. The mighty will fall. But many humble unknown Christians will suffer honorably and beautifully and know the blessedness of being persecuted for righteousness sake.

5. Prepare a refuge?
This great nation was founded when a group of persecuted believers fled religious persecution to find and enjoy freedom of religion. It’s beyond ironic that the very same pilgrims would be among the first targets of this new “religious” persecution if they were alive today. If the current trajectory continues, we will look at one another and ask, “Where can we flee to?” Perhaps a State will come forward that will stand up to this tyranny and offer refuge to thousands of moral and spiritual refugees, aliens in their own land. Maybe another Mayflower will be required, perhaps many of them, this time to sail away from these shores in hope of finding freedom to worship and serve God according to His Word. But where to? Where is left? Russia? Which brings us to…

6. Prepare for eternity
The Bible makes clear, and history backs it up, that when a people goes down this route, it’s close to it’s end. It has run out of moral ground, it’s already over the cliff, and falling into the holy wrath of God. As country after country passes gay marriage laws, the end is coming closer and closer. If the USA falls, how far behind will God’s judgment be? The time is short and shortening. We need mercy, we need prayer, we need to plead with our family and friends to flee the coming wrath by fleeing to Christ the only savior of sinners – yes even homosexual sinners – that will come to Him for salvation.

In the meantime, let’s not give up and give in but continue to do all that we can to save our society and precious souls.

"Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. " (Deuteronomy 12:8)

<While few pro homosexual writers concede that the Bible is contrary to same sex behavior, virtually all reject any Biblical censure of it. Author Robin Scroggs states, “Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today’s debate.”(Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, l983) p. 127.) William M. Kent, a member of the committee assigned by United Methodists to study homosexuality, explicitly denied the inspiration of any anti-homosex passages in the Bible, and their application today. John Boswell stated, regarding the Bible, that "one must first relinquish the concept of a single book containing a uniform corpus of writings accepted as morally authoritative." (John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 92) John Barton states that the Bible is "a big baggy compendium of a book, full of variety and inconsistency, sometimes mistaken on matters of fact and theology alike." (John Barton, "The Place of the Bible in Moral Debate," Theology 88 (May 1985), 206) Gary David Comstock, Protestant chaplain at Wesleyan University, termed it "dangerous" to fail to condemn the apostle Paul's condemnation of homosexual relations, and advocated removing such from the canon. (Gary David Comstock, Gay Theology Without Apology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1993), p. 43. http://www.albertmohler.com/article_read.php?cid7) Episcopalian professor L. William Countryman contends, “The gospel allows no rule against the following, in and of themselves: . .. bestiality, polygamy, homosexual acts,” or “pornography.” (Dirt, Greed, and Sex (Fortress, 1988) Christine E. Gudorf flatly denies that the Bible is the primary authority for Christian ethics. (Balch, Homosexuality, Science, and the "plain Sense" of Scripture p. 121) Bishop (Ret.) John Shelby Spong denies all miracles, including the virgin conception and literal bodily resurrection of Christ, as well as the Divine inspiration of Scripture, and denies that there are any moral absolutes (Michael Bott and Jonathan Sarfati, "What’s Wrong With (Former) Bishop Spong?") and relegates the clear condemnation of homosexual relations in Romans 1 to being the product of the apostle Paul's “ill-informed, culturally biased prejudices.” (Spong, Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality, 149-52)

Another among the minority of pro homosexuals who affirm that the Bible does condemn homosexual relations while seeking to reject such is Walter Wink, who states "I have long insisted that the issue is one of hermeneutics, and that efforts to twist the text to mean what it clearly does not say are deplorable. Simply put, the Bible is negative toward same-sex behavior, and there is no getting around it." And that "Paul wouldn't accept a loving homosexual relationship for a minute." However, he joins similar revisionists who disallow that the Bible offers a coherent sexual morality ''for today'', especially as regards homoeroticism, which teaching Wink terms “interpretative quicksand”. Instead, he joins others in asserting that people possess a right to sex that can supercede Biblical laws, and essentially proposes that sexual ethics are best determined by one's own subjective understanding of Christian love. (Walter Wink, "To hell with gays" and "the Bible and homosexuality") Daniel Helminiak's theory of ethics is similar, which Olliff and Hodges notes "is, at its very foundation, self-refuting. While he professes Christianity, he has adopted the autonomous man's position for the basis of his ethics." A Further Look at Pro-Homosexual Theology, Derrick K. Olliff and Dewey H. Hodges

Likewise, pro-homosexual author Daniel Via states, "that Scripture gives no explicit approval to same-sex intercourse. I maintain, however, that the absolute prohibition can be overridden, regardless of how many times it is stated, for there are good reasons to override it." (Dan Otto Via, Robert A. J. Gagnon, "Homosexuality and the Bible: two views," pp. 38,94) This requires the same type of discredited reasoning as Wink, and Via's opposing co-author Robert Gagnon responds by noting that Via is an absolutist about no absolutes," and while Scripture clearly manifests otherwise, by arguing that nothing is intrinsically immoral no sexual act can be categorically considered as immoral, including the consensual incestuous relationship of a man with his mother, which was so sinful that it required severe spiritual discipline. (1Cor. 5) (http://www.robgagnon.net/2VRejoinder.htm) (Homosexuality and the Bible: A Real Debate)

HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONS and the BIBLE (

I do not see him as so much digging in his heels by “lingering,” but as being weak, indecisive and reluctant and or fearful to leave.

I suspect it was far more than simply being weak and indecisive. Please note what Peter tells us:

2Pe 2:7-8 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard);

I was thinking about the difference in attitude of Abraham and Lot.

Abraham assisted the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah in retrieving their possessions (and helping Lot). But he wanted no reward from them. I suspect he treated them with dignity but that is where it ended. When he heard of God's plans he (essentially) prayed for them and pleaded with God to spare them. Abraham didn't understand the depths of their depravity the way God understood it.

Lot OTOH went to live with them. Lot looked around him and enjoyed the cushiness of his life and decided it was better than being out in the desert with Abraham. When told of what God was planning on doing, Lot pleaded with his future son-in-laws to leave. But by then Lot had lost credibility and they thought it was a joke. To think Lot was willing to give his daughters to such people to married should say something unlike Abraham who refuse to allow Isaac to marry those around and sent off for a wife for Isaac. The reason Lot's faith was weak was because he tormented his soul.

I'm not saying we should all become Puritans. But Christians today can make all sorts of excuses for the fleeting pleasures of this world. The contrasts of the lives of Abraham and Lot should be a warning to us. Abraham became the father of many nations. Lot became the father of the Ammonites and the Moabites.

Lot certainly is set in contrast to Abraham, and is an example of weak Christianity, and who has little salt and seemingly little weight of credibility (though even the apostles also mocked), but my point is that if Lot was so, then what about the present state in which you will find few constraining strangers or even brethren to lodge with them in a strange city at nigh (I have some experience), and risk his own for theirs, even if it indicated a lack of judgment. And have virgin daughters and other married ones in Sodom no less, despite his lack of judgment and apparent carnal reasoning in choosing it.

But as for Lot tormenting his righteous soul “he was” tormenting his soul as in being grieved by it (and we should be in American), by choosing to stay and care for strangers and keep sodomites out of his house.

But how many will move from America as iniquity abounds? Meanwhile, fornication abounds among “Christian” teens, and not just the world.

As for enjoying the cushiness of his life (what sitting in the gate presumes), how many believers are not seeking to be productive for the Lord today? How much money is wasted on entertainment and other things? How little goes toward the Lord’s work? Look at the stats http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.htm

Anyway, my point is certainty not to make excuses for the fleeting pleasures of this world, but that while Lot is presented as the worst kind of Christian, he looks good in some respects compare with the norm today.

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