I think the “fame and fortune vs. the Word of God” argument is valid, but I think there’s another. The decision that not only preachers and teachers have, but also everyday people in the church as a whole have is...do I want to go along with accepting this, or do I stand firm in scriptural truth and face the possibility of real persecution?
I know that there are many who claim they wouldn’t care what happens to them because they are “firm in their stance” on the truth of the Word of God. They figure persecution is ‘part of the package’ of being a Christian...which it is.
People face losing friends (Facebook and/or real-time), getting called names, facing boycotts (which haven’t really worked), and face protests from people who support homosexual marriage...or homosexual inclusion into the church.
What I wonder is...how many of them who say that would stand firm will fold when real pressure is applied? What would happen when ‘bigotry’ of any sort against homosexuals is codified as law? Some say it is now...but what if it was made MUCH easier for someone to take your livelihood, your property, or to put you in prison for taking a Biblical stand?
What I am saying is that the time is fast approaching where the stand you take may mean that you really are leaving everything on the table and you will face actual persecution.
The author of this thoughtful piece left out one other key scripture, a quote from Christ Himself:
“4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matt. 19:4)
He says nothing about homosexual marriage. Did the Creator not know about “sexual orientation”?
Silence of the Scriptures is never an argument for license to do something different from what is specified. See the Hebrews writer’s argument in 7:14: If God through Moses “spake nothing” about it, it was NOT authorized.
Hmmm... yes, I see you point and I think you may be on to something. It is coming for all of us. And a testing of the Church is not a bad thing as a rite of purification.