In one of her blogs, Cathleen Falsani writes an article about the coming “Gay Awakening” of Evangelicals. In her article, she cites a lot of “theologians” that differ with the traditional understanding of homosexuality. One she cites early in her article, the tattooed son of Jim and Tammy Faye, Jay Bakker, pulpit (or, rather, barstool) champion of homosexuality.
To read Falsani’s blog in full, go to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathleen-falsani/the-great-gay-awakening_b_808235.html
In introducing this pastor that she lauds, she tells us that he is 35, pastors a "church" in a bar… and is single and divorced.
I would like to introduce myself to Cathleen. Hello Cathleen. My name is Chris Parker. I didn’t have the privilege of going to a stalwart conservative undergrad school like Wheaton, which has produced many inspiring models of the faithful, like Jim Elliot. But I did attend the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, SBTS in Louisville, KY. I am 36 years old, married now for six years (I was married at thirty!) to a godly woman I prayed for for near twelve years, and we have two handsome young boys the Lord graciously blessed us with.
I grew up in a conservative SB church, and made a “profession of faith” at the age of six years. I was very active in church life, youth choir, drama, missions, etc., till I began to drift from the teachings I was taught in the traditional, conservative church. This continued through my second semester in college where I was in a car wreck one morning coming home from a midnight snowboarding session.
My head was smashed between my newly painted Mustang and it fractured all the bones on my face. I was also bruised on the right side of my brain stem, resulting in leaving me paralyzed on my left side and in a coma for 16 days. As I finally regained my long-term memory a month later, I saw God’s grace and mercy in sparing my life when I had been spitting in his face by living for myself. I repented of my sins and gave control of my life to Jesus, and my life has been a shining blaze of glory, through the trials of life, following God’s leadership through His word to this day.
As I’ve heard many of the arguments you make before, I thought I might offer a true biblical response. In your blog, you write:
According to biblical accounts, Jesus said very little, if anything, about homosexuality. But he spent loads of time talking, preaching, teaching and issuing commandments about love.
That was my answer: Love them. Unconditionally, without caveats or exceptions.
I wasn't sure whether homosexuality actually was a sin. But I was certain I was commanded to love.
You know, there are many things Jesus didn’t speak about. He didn’t speak about the pros and cons of different forms of government. He didn’t speak about the original language mankind used. Jesus didn’t ever speak about duck-billed platypluses or kangaroos. There’s a lot Jesus didn’t speak about. But regarding your statement that He never spoke to Homosexuality, a sin forbidden in the Jewish Torah, along with many others… He did affirm the validity of the Old Testament. He said in Matthew 5:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Here Jesus clearly states that He is not to abolish the teachings of the Law (the Torah) or the Prophets. In fact, in verse eighteen, he implies that God’s word in the Old Testament is going to have validity until heaven and earth disappear! So as Jesus Himself affirms the Old Testament teachings, He gives validity to the authority of the Old Testament.
"The simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even," Bakker writes. "But before you say, 'I told you so,' consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.”
Indeed, if you read the Old Testament laws without the proper understanding of seeing it in reference to the Jewish people as the people chosen by God to reveal his standards of righteousness, in contrast to the “Gentiles,” the other nations of the world that did not know the true God, Old Testament laws can seem trite and outdated.
For a simple answer to Bakker’s assertion to the inapplicability of God’s word, I would say that God’s LAW, the Torah, consisted of three different parts, the Civil, the Moral and the Ceremonial (form of Religion, though it all was “religious,” that is, done to Yahweh). It was primarily the Civil forms that were fulfilled by Jesus, when He said He did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Examples of these would be of eating shellfish, cutting sideburns, etc., all of which had religious significance.
The reason God contained these in His holy laws for the Israelites, was to set them apart from the nations of the world. Read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18:19-21; 19 . Of course, the Moral aspects of Yahweh’s Law, such as the Ten Commandments, are still in effect. Now, after the first coming of Christ, who made a New Covenant, or Testament, followers of His word are no longer bound to the restrictions of the Civil code under the Old Covenant (Testament). Since the Gospel is first to the Jew, then the Gentile, the Gentiles are grafted by faith, into the Covenant promises of Abraham, that the righteous would inherit the earth (aretz).
The ceremonial law has not all been fulfilled yet with the first coming of Christ, to lay down his life to satisfy the wrath of God against those God has chosen and predestines to receive His favor (Rom 9:16). In His first coming, Christ fulfilled the meaning of the spring feasts, and the fall feasts await their fulfillment in Christ’s second coming. For a thorough explanation of this, WatchmanBibleStudy shows an excellent graph detailing this fulfillment: http://www.watchmanbiblestudy.com/BibleStudies/Definitions/Feasts/FeastsofIsrael.htm.
For this brief answer to Bakker and Bell’s and Mclaren and Falsani’s claims that we can throw out the Old Testament’s codes of morality because Jesus didn’t speak of Homosexuality, He didn’t have to. Jesus told us that He believes God’s word (the Old and New Testaments) is truth (John 17:17). This includes Leviticus 18, which states: 22 “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable. Those are the LORD’s words, not mine.
It appears, Cathleen, you have not found the completion to your theological framework as you had hoped. Jesus affirms the Old Testament. Your openly gay friends are twisting the words of Jesus, or discarding them, and claiming their teachings as truth, and guardians of the old faith as outdated, unenlightened, bigoted and intolerant. Don’t you think, Cathleen, that it sounds like the ploy of another one, who sought to twist God’s truth in the very beginning. I believe his exact words were, “Did God really say…?”
If you really want to live your life in fear of the holy One, you should seek new friends, and new birth (cf. John 3).
This blog I write is to try and tell people about the warning signs God has given us in His word about His return and judgment, so that we would recognize them and the nearness of His coming and judgment. One of these signs is the modern day debate about the acceptability of the Homosexual lifestyle.
One of the signs of the last times that Jesus gave was that life would be much like it was lived in the time of Noah. That famous descriptor that was familiar to every Jewish mind was Genesis 6:5, which tells us… 5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
Part of that great wickedness was sexual immorality, perversity, a twisting/distorting, if you will, of God’s perfect design form the complementarian roles of man and woman together for life. Earlier, in verse 2, Moses speaks of the fallen angels (“sons of God”) marrying the daughters of men, and giving birth to a breed of giants. Immediately after this, we are told that
7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
The rebellious angels that left their proper abode (Jude 6) came to marry and corrupt the human gene pool, and thus thwart the Creator’s plan of redeeming humanity. If they could introduce bestiality and interbreed the humans with animals, then man’s gene pool would be inhuman, and the hopes of sending a human redeemer would be thwarted.
Part of that sexual perversity was homosexuality, to which Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit writes in Romans 1:18-32: 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Here you can see a picture of the great wickedness that grieved the LORD of all. And from Genesis 6--9, you see the story unfolding of God’s great judgment upon man’s great wickedness, the perversion of creation and the corruption of human and animal lines. And we see that happening again today, so much so that not only are sexually deviant behaviors shouted to be “normal” and “good for society,”, but there is even an ideology forming of Tran humanism, combining the human genome with that of technology, to “improve” humanity.
It seems like today’s society sounds alot like the description Jesus gives of the last times before his return for judgment of all those who reject His truth (Matt. 24:37; 2 Thess. 2:10).
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