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“This is from a ‘Christian’ website ?”

Self-proclaimed. They should not print such rubbish.

Nothing in this article references the Bible or church doctrine. He uses the words “faith,” “conscience,” “pray,” and “truth.”

This is an ecumenical puff piece that would more appropriately be placed in a left-wing rag like WP or NYT.

The guy justifies his position simply because he was a youth pastor and a father. This is supposed to give him authority to tell other Christians not to defend Moore.

The Bible has a whole different set of criteria than this guy or many others attacking Moore. God does not make an issue of age in the Bible. There is almost no issue of age brought up with regard to marriage. I have studied this out very thoroughly. There are only a few verses in the entire Bible that can be used to argue for setting some standard for age or age difference in marriage.

Down through the history of man, young women, still as young as 14 or even younger, have ordinarily been considered eligible for marriage. In the Bible, king Josiah had his first son at 14 and his second at 16. We see all kinds of prohibitions in the Bible about improper sexual relations, but this one (concerning age and age differences) is never addressed anywhere.

What God is concerned about is that men and women remain chaste, and that sex is something only experienced in the context of a lifelong monogamous marriage.

The Bible is concerned about consent of the parties being married, as well as their parents. Moore indicated he never dated any girl without their mother’s permission. The author here points out that he should also have got the father’s permission. (And who is to say that he did not?) Assumedly, parental permission to court / date (from a Biblical perspective) assumes that there is no extra-marital sex, there is no coercion, and the parents are the best protectors of their children.

So the author’s position is not wrong on that issue, but I really would like to know if this youth pastor ever dated anyone without first getting approval from both parents, and also if he has enforced such a strict policy on the youth he “pastored” in his church. Is he against teenage girls dating, or is he only against them dating someone much older? And how does his interjection of his personal scruples justify his advocacy against defending Moore? From my many years of experience (in contrast with the author’s) most church youth groups have sexual immorality going on within the members of the group. And there is more of the worldly concern over age differences and appearances than obeying God’s prohibition against fornication.

But let’s look at the Biblical standard for accusations:

2 Corinthians 13:1
This will be the third time I am coming to you. “By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.”

1 Timothy 5:19
Do not receive an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses.

There is no testimony or evidence of any crime or impropriety by Moore from a legal or Biblical standpoint. As a man who has demonstrated a public commitment to follow God and honor His word, and has been attacked viciously for this, it is wrong to give any credibility to his accusers without FIRST there being strong evidence of support. That did not happen.

In allegations of sexual assault, there must be an outcry. See Deuteronomy 22. This is something investigators of child abuse use as a criterion today.

Numbers 30:5 talks about the authority of a husband or father to cancel the vows of their wives or daughters (respectively) as long as they decide in the day they hear of these vows. This shows the principle of taking immediate action. There is diminished authority and also credibility when someone brings up accusations from the distance past, especially when no outcry occurred earlier. This is one of the reasons we have statute of limitation laws.

Opponents of Moore, including at least some of his accusers, support the murder of babies, financial subsidies for this, homosexual marriage and adoption of children, and laws that punish people for disagreeing with these things.

There is no need for accusers to come forward to disclose these people secretly do these things. They do them openly. How a “Christian” website can propagate such anti-Christian attacks is unfathomable.