Bishop Edir Macedo and Homosexuality
By Julio Severo
The official website of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) announced that its founder, Bishop Edir Macedo, has a stance different, in the homosexual issue, of the position of many evangelical leaders in Brazil.
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| Bishop Edir Macedo |
Macedo presented his view immediately expressing a contradictory information, because there is imposition at UCKG — concerning offerings. Many of the services of this strange neo-Pentecostal church are dedicated to impose on the members’ consciences that with no big offerings, there is no blessing. Even though it is not a legal pressure, it is a psychological imposition and manipulation. The result of the psychological pressure is offering money flooding the UCKG safes and making its biggest leaders rich, including Macedo, who rolls in money at offerers’ expense
Actually, Jesus made an abundance of miracles of healing and deliverance, but you never see Him saying, “If you want to receive a miracle, take part in the Miracle Campaign, with an offering (psychologically compulsory, as usual) from 50 percent or more of your income. You need to sacrifice your pocket!” No, with Jesus no one needed to empty his pockets and fill others’ pockets. But everybody received miracles. With Macedo is different: only those who fill his pocket are worthy to receive miracles. Big sacrifices, big miracles. His theology is an aggressive prosperity theology.
As to Macedo’s politically correct view that Jesus did not speak up against homosexuality, this perspective, which is not originally from him, has been expressed by progressive Protestants (progressive in Brazil is another designation for socialist). Rev. Carlos Bezerra, who is considered an ideal politician by the liberal sensationalist tabloid Genizah, said in 2013:
“How many times did Jesus speak about homosexuality? I answer: Never… Were homosexuals in the top list of people most confronted by Him?”
Bezerra is also a state representative and the most prominent leader of PSDB in the São Paulo state. (PSDB is the social democratic party in Brazil. Even though PSDB has opposed the ruling socialist Workers’ Party, PSDB founder Fernando Henrique Cardoso is a close friend of Bill Clinton. In the last Brazilian presidential election, David Axelrod, a Marxist strategist who was the top Obama adviser, came to Brazil to build the political image of the PSDB candidate. So the political fight in Brazil has been anti-U.S. leftists against pro-U.S. leftists.) It is with his conviction that Jesus has never condemned homosexuality that Bezerra never mobilized PSDB to hinder several homosexualist laws furiously advancing in the São Paulo state, ruled by PSDB.
Answering Macedo, who is imitating Bezerra, you could also say, “How many times did Jesus speak about child abuse? I answer: Never… Were child abusers in the top list of people most confronted by Him?”
Should you remove the gay agenda and child abuse from Christian concerns just because Jesus never mentioned them directly?
Jesus just did not attack head-on the homosexual agenda because this was not the obsession in the Jewish society where he preached the Gospel. Each generation has its own challenges and special attention. Without the Holy Spirit to guide us in God’s Word, it is impossible to give an answer to these challenges and special attentions. In this point, it is important to give attention to Luther’s words, “If I declare openly, with the loudest voice and the clearest expression, each portion of God’s truth, except precisely the tiny portion that the world and the devil are, in this time, attacking, then I am not really confessing Christ, however much I may cry aloud that I am confessing Him.”
Did Jesus speak or not against homosexuality? If you believe God’s Word, the answer is yes.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 ESV)
Jesus is the Word. When you read Leviticus or Romans condemning homosexual acts, it is Jesus speaking. When you read the Old or the New Testament condemning homosexual acts, it is Jesus speaking.
In this point, some could conclude that Macedo is following some crazy prophecy or revelation that made him stray from God’s Word. Actually, Macedo rejects all prophecy and revelation for today. He believes that such manifestations of the Holy Spirit were available only 2,000 years ago and that today prophecies and revelations are demonic. Regarding to prophecies and revelations, he follows the cessationist heresy.
So if a prophecy or revelation comes to Macedo saying “Macedo, stop supporting the socialist Workers’ Party. Stop advocating abortion. Stop joining liberals to attack my servants who warn about the gay agenda” his answer will be, “Shoo, Satan! I expel you from my life with all your false directions.”
I believe in Christian revelations and prophecies as gifts given by the Holy Spirit to equip his church. But do I need these gifts to reject the socialist Workers’ Party, abortion and the gay agenda? Of course, I do not. I have never needed these gifts to know that socialism, abortion and the gay agenda are malignant.
And how to say that fighting these malignant agendas has no part in a prophetic manifestation in the last days? A prophecy in Malachi 4 says that before the great Day of the Lord, He will send Prophet Elijah, whose ministry was to fight the worship of god Baal, which was rife with baby sacrifice — equivalent today to abortion — and homosexual priests — equivalent today to the current condition of homosexuality, which is considered sacred by dirty laws.
This is, Prophet Malachi prophesied a restoration of Elijah’s prophetic ministry for the last days. Oh, I forgot that Macedo does not believe in prophecies…
If Macedo is not following prophecies and revelations, so whom is he following? In the homosexual issue, he is following Bezerra, who is liberal. But Macedo’s embrace of socialism is not new. Even though he today condemns pastors raising a flag against the gay movement and homosexual “marriage,” he is famous for his political endorsement of Brazilian socialist former and current presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff. For years, Macedo has been raising a Workers’ Party flag at UCKG.
Using the same Macedo’s rule of measure, I ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He would do it.
Although he declares that UCKG does not impose anything on anyone, apparently no UCKG minister remembers it in election time, when they impose on their congregations the choice of just candidates handpicked by the UCKG national leaders. And when these candidates are elected, their work has to be aligned with the UCKG big boss’ commands. If the big boss raises the Workers’ Party flag, everybody else are supposed to follow him.
I ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He would do it.
And coincidently the Workers’ Party (WP) main flag has been abortion and homosexuality. With this flag, WP attacks any individual opposing abortion and homosexuality. In fact, every socialist will make the same attack. This is the reason Ed René Kivitz and other Brazilian progressive Protestants advocate gay rights and attack Assemblies of God minister Silas Malafaia and others in their conservative stances against abortion and the gay agenda. In the same vein, Carlos Bezerra of PSDB and Macedo of UCKG make the same attacks.
I liked more when UCKG, in the late 1970s, had an aggressive focus on delivering people from the oppression of Afro-Brazilian religions — which are very similar to voodoo and Santeria and, according to the Bible, are witchcraft. Today, the UCKG’s aggressive focus is to take money from people and invest in the fortunes of UCKG Solomons, who abound in greed, but are pauper in wisdom and Christian love.
During the 1980s and 1990s UCKG was conservative and pro-life. In 1993 a UCKG newspaper in São Paulo declared,
According to the Bible teaching, God gave free will to every human being. In other words, he gave to each individual the ability to choose what he wishes to do with his life. But the right to grant and take the life of an individual belongs only to God. First Samuel 2:6 says: “The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up” (ESV). No case of rape, or a risk of a child to be born with physical or mental deficiency, entitles a human to take somebody’s life. The Bible teaches that all is possible to him who believes (Mark 9:23). Therefore, the cases that in the science’s eyes appear to be impossible become possible in God’s eyes.
In 1996, Folha Universal (the official UCKG newspaper in Brazil) said,
This procedure (abortion), often insane, besides provoking the death of a small being, who has no minimal chance of defending himself, can lead its committer to death. Well, no one has a right to take the life of other individual.
Yet, afterward UCKG began to get near WP and support abortion. Before the election of Lula for the Brazilian presidency in 2002, Bishop Rodrigues, who was one of the UCKG founders, made political pilgrimages among evangelical leaders, proclaiming, “We have the obligation to dedicate ourselves in the Lula campaign… So let us embrace a new way of doing politics. It is action socialism.”
Rodrigues even asked forgiveness from Lula for the years UCKG had opposed him.
In 2003, he committed another fatal sin: he asked forgiveness from Afro-Brazilian religions’ adherents at the Brazilian Congress floor for the “opposition” UCKG had made against them. No much later, Rodrigues was swallowed by the vortex of WP’s political scandals.
The Brazilian religion that most embraces the homosexual sin is Candomblé, with other Afro-Brazilian religions and witchcraft. When Rodrigues, as the top UCKG representative in the Brazilian Congress, asked forgiveness from these religions, he gave a green light to the demons of these religions, including demons of homosexuality.
All that is needed now is for UCKG and Macedo to ask forgiveness from Luiz Mott, the most prominent leader in the homosexual movement in Brazil, for all the demons of homosexuality they expelled from sorcerers during decades.
Macedo is a black sheep in the prosperity gospel movement concerning abortion and homosexual issues. One of the most prominent preachers of this gospel, Dr. Myles Munroe, denounced the homosexual agenda.
Yet, to those who are surprised at Macedo now raising the flag of opposition to evangelicals fighting the gay agenda, it is worthy to remember that the UCKG founder has carried, for years, the disgraceful flag of explicit abortion advocacy. In 2013, Macedo said, “I support abortion yes, and I say it without fearing the consequences, and if I am sinning, I commit this sin fully aware, yes!”
In the official biography “O Bispo: A História Revelada de Edir Macedo” (The Bishop: The Revealed History of Edir Macedo), published in 2007, authors Christina Lemos and Douglas Tavolaro reveal what Macedo says:
“I support the right of a woman to choose… I support abortion, yes. The Bible also does it… A woman needs to have the right to choose.”
Now, he supports homosexuals having a supposed right to choose homosexual “marriage,” to the detriment of the natural family.
Therefore, his new stance on homosexuality should be no surprise, because it is just a natural progression of somebody who chose the advocacy of the legal slaughter of the unborn. It is the “progress” of decadence.
I suppose if Macedo lived in the time of King Ahab and Jezebel, he would have given them support. How do I know it? Because he has supported modern Ahab (Lula) and modern Jezebel (Dilma).
As to Prophet Elijah, who made so much opposition to Ahab and Jezebel, Macedo would say: “God does not want nothing by force. There are many ‘prophets’ raising a flag against Baal worship, baby sacrifice and homosexual priests…”
Macedo, who began his ministry expelling demons, now needs abortion and sodomy demons expelled from him.
Portuguese version of this article: Bispo Macedo e homossexualismo
Source: Last Days Watchman
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