Thursday, December 26, 2013

THE BIBLICAL TRUTH ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY
Duck Dynasty Revisited
Providing Biblical Answers to the Homosexual Claims
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

LINK to video/interview: http://newsroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/19/duck-debate-bigotry-vs-belief/
Interview on December 19, 2013


Interviewees:
Wilson Cruz, national spokesman for GLAAD & Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.


The following are claims and statements that Wilson Cruz made during the interview with CNN. I endeavor to provide biblical answers and Christ-centered rebuttals to Wilson’s comments.

[The statements in bold are those that came from Wilson, the national spokesman for GLAAD & a proponent of LGBT. The answers below each statement are biblical responses to Wilson’s comments.]

1. Not all Christians support views of Phil Robertson. More and more Christians support LGBT.
One must understand that not all who claim to be ‘Christians’ are in fact Christians. Many have intellectual knowledge about God, about Jesus, about Jesus dying on a cross, have been baptized, and perhaps even attend church, but none of these deeds make someone a Christian. A Christian is one who has repented of his sin, hates his sin, turns from it, follows Christ and clings to Him and Him alone as his only hope of being spared from the wrath of God and entering heaven. A believer is one who loves God’s Word, reads God’s Word, obeys God’s Word, and follows God’s Word. A Christian is one who loves what God loves and hates what God hates.

The Bible unequivocally affirms that homosexuality is an abomination to God. Furthermore, God burnt cities with fire and brimstone because of Sodomy — that is, homosexual relationships. God clearly declares that the wrath of God abides upon men because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness — even though they know God and the general truth about God revealed in creation and in their conscience. Those who reject God’s perfect design and order for heterosexual relationships are those whom God gives over to their own lusts. And, one must not forget that the effeminate and the homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is to say, those who live with these patterns of sin without repenting, turning, and trusting in Christ alone while forsaking these sinful habits will be judged forever outside the kingdom of God in the eternal Lake of Fire.

So then, all true Christians support the claim that Robertson made that homosexuality is a sin worthy of eternal death. And unless one repents and turns from this sin, they will all perish. No true Christians can support the LGBT movement. It has everything to do with what God Himself declares in His Word about sinners, the homosexual lifestyle which perverts God’s original intent and design for marriage, and the love for God’s supernatural, supreme, inerrant, and sufficient truth contained in the Word of God.

To conclude, then, Wilson’s claim here is false. There are no Christians who love God’s Word, who know God’s Word, and who cling to God’s sufficient, clear, and infallible truth revealed in the Scriptures who can affirm, support, and legitimize the LGBT movement. It must be called for what it is: sinful, contrary to God’s design and purpose, and an abomination in God’s eyes. And, unless one repents and turns from this sinful lifestyle, they will eternally perish for their sin.

2. He invites all people to know us, our lives, our families and to meet young people & are accepting that they are LGBT.
In answering the question from the CNN interviewer, Wilson openly invited all people to come into his life and, by implication, others who share the same lifestyle of LGBT. In proffering this, Wilson presumably promotes the idea that he and the others of the LGBT way of life are normal, accepting, family people, similar to many others (desiring and needing families, relationships, community, etc.).

In this answer, Wilson also declares that there are many other young people who accept the reality that they are LGBT. He suggests that there are those young people (who presumably will impact more young people in this generation) who accept “just who they are” and unashamedly live the LGBT lifestyle.

Wilson, without even knowing it, nails the problem exactly. This is precisely the problem. The problem is that those in the LGBT movement are in fact just like everyone else, namely, dead in sin, enemies of God, rebels of God’s Law, rejecting Christ, and destined for divine wrath. Every person born into this world enters with a radically depraved, wholly corrupt, and spiritually dead nature. None are born good. None are born acceptable before God. All enter the world dead in sin. So, in a sense, Wilson unconsciously states some degree of truth here that those of the LGBT movement are just like others — lost in their sin and totally in need of God’s intervening grace to save from future hell.

However, one can take no comfort from the reality that all humans lie dead in sin and doomed for divine fury together. There is no hope in the fact that LGBT movement folks will head to hell just as it is for those who live lives of ongoing adultery, drunkenness, idolatry, slander and sexual immorality.

A true Christian does not need to know the lifestyle of the LGBT people. They don’t need to learn about their relationships, their desires, their lives, their families. Why? Because the same fundamental heart (internal) need of the LGBT folks is the same need of every person on the planet. That is to say, every person lives desperately in need of God’s sovereign and electing grace to snatch them out of the eternal fire. Thus, a Christian can and must do the most loving thing possible to a LGBT person, proclaim to them the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ and plead with them to repent of their sinful lifestyle, to turn to Jesus Christ to find salvation, and follow singularly and solely after Jesus Christ alone as they pursue a new way of life as God directs in His Word.

3. People need to get to know us, see our lives, see our desires & understand that we accept who we are.
Wilson beckons the viewers to get to know them (the LGBT folks), to see their lives, their desires and understand one primary factor: they fully accept and appreciate who they are. This statement has two overwhelmingly severe inaccuracies about it.

First, the assumption in Wilson’s statement is that those in the LGBT movement genuinely believe that they cannot change who they are because this is in fact who they are, who they have been, and what they have been designed to be. But this cannot be the case because God has created all men and women to naturally desire the opposite gender. This has been this way since the creation of the world and even to the present. Homosexuality is a twisted, corrupt, sinful, confused, and abominable way of life. God never condones this, accepts this, turns a blind eye to this, approves of this, or promises to not punish this sin. The opposite is true. The Bible undeniably declares homosexuality to be “contrary” to God’s creative order. It is not natural, but unnatural. It is not what God designed, it flatly corrupts and flagrantly confuses God’s beautiful design for marriage and procreation. None are in the ongoing state of homosexuality because they have always been this way and have now come to accept it. All who live this kind of lifestyle do so as an outward expression of the inward sin residing in the heart that manifests itself in rebellion to God’s Law, transgression of God’s commands, and sin against God’s beautiful design.

Second, the proposition that Wilson and others related to LGBT accept who they are carries no weight since it does not matter what we think of ourselves or if we accept ourselves. This thinking inherently sees man (or more specifically, ‘self’) as the supreme being of authority (and, hence, self is ‘god’ and this is idolatry and self worship). The Word of God reveals that what matters most is what God thinks of man and whether or not God accepts a man to be His child or His enemy — an object of His eternal blessing or an object of His eternal wrath. In no ambiguous terms, the Bible reveals what God thinks of mankind (every person). Apart from God, every person’s thoughts are only evil continually. Apart from God, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who does good, not even one. None seek for God. None fear God. Thus, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. The wages of man’s sin is death. All have turned aside to their own way. All are guilty with iniquity and the stain of that sin lies open and exposed before God’s omniscient eye. God accepts no one in his own way of life. The only way that God can accept a person is if that person is in Christ. This can only happen when a sinner receives the ‘new birth’ from God (regeneration) and repents of sin, hates it, forsakes it, and follows Christ, and obeys His Word joyfully.

So ultimately, Wilson’s statement here about accepting who they are cannot fully harmonize with the biblical truths since the ultimate One who must accept us is God — not self. And God cannot accept and welcome to glory those who persist in sinful lifestyles. But full forgiveness, total cleansing, an entirely new nature, a new eternal destiny, and a shelter from the fully-deserved wrath of God is available to those who recognize their sin, their eternal predicament, the only salvation available in Jesus Christ and substitutionary death at Calvary, and the turning away from this lifestyle to pursue holiness, godliness, and righteousness.


The following parts that answer the rest of Wilson's claims and statements will come soon.
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