by Standerinfamilycourt

“Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.”    – Luke 8:16

“….gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”   –   Galatians 5:23-24

There’s no question about it, disciples who make up their mind to pay the very high price to obey Christ, that is, to choose not to enter into a subsequent intimate relationship or civil marriage with another person while their legally-estranged true spouse is alive, is probably the most countercultural type of figure in modern society, probably on a scale with the first “Followers of the Way” in the first century church, even if their executed bodies are not being used as street torches, as recently depicted in the 2018 motion picture, “Paul, Apostle of Christ”.

“For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, — that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery. “For whoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another, commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.” (Athenagoras – 175 A.D., A Plea For The Christians, 33)

“Standers”, for purposes of this post will also include those who, based on moral conscience and scriptural instruction, have exited a civilly-legal “marriage” of the sort Jesus called continuously adulterous, even if they’ve never actually had a covenant spouse (as Jesus defined in Matthew 19:4-6).   The true measure is the extent that their life choices and the significant, visible sacrifices they make, speak biblical truth about marriage into a deafened, jaded culture, and this measure is what this post will bring into focus.   Repenters from an unlawful union are standing for the sanctity of holy matrimony in their own circumstances, and quite often they suffer even greater censure and persecution at the hands of other believers than do those standing for the soul of their true one-flesh partner and for the rebuilding of their own covenant family.    In a broader sense, the ranks of “standers” also includes pastors with congregations, many of whom are in intact biblical, covenant marriages, who gladly suffer very real career consequences (along with their family) as the high price for putting rightly-divided scripture and the souls of their flock above the corrupted circa-1970’s doctrine change of their denomination.   Likewise, “standers” include Catholic priests who stand strong against abuse of annulment canons, and who speak out for the souls of those served communion while they are living in what that church euphemistically calls  “irregular circumstances”.

Not all standers can go lobby at the state capital, or have the means (time, treasure, talent) to bring a constitutional appeal of their state statute, or create effective media that exposes the travesties of unilateral “no-fault” divorce to the uninformed, nay, the duped public.    But, not being able to do these things certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t making a very significant contribution in the big picture journey toward success.   Of course, those whom the Lord has resourced to do both over time, will make an even greater contribution.

The truth is that many of these standers who have a covenant spouse off in the Far Country in an adulterous civil-only “marriage” to a counterfeit would actually prefer not to see unilateral “no-fault” laws reformed to be consent-based only.    They fear the possibility that their prodigal may lose the ready ability to repent by divorcing out of these immoral arrangements, and may die in their sin as a result, if the counterfeit spouse won’t consent.    There would certainly be a much greater risk of this if we went all the way back to the fault-only laws of the 1960’s.    We talked to those reform risks in a much-earlier blog post.   Meanwhile, the Lord is still using even the passive witness of covenant marriage standers in many powerful ways.  Here we discuss just seven of them that relate to cultural influence.

At the end of our days, here is how the Lord will test the result of all of our choices and activities, in terms of how we’ve used our time, treasure and talent.   Our part in getting an evil law repealed won’t count for much in itself, really, but the souls that we’ve helped to heaven as a result of the sacrifices in our role, most certainly will:

“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.   Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver,  precious stones, wood, hay, straw,  each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.   If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.   If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss;  but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”   –  1 Corinthians 3:11-15

Here is how countless unsung “standers”, in their everyday lives, are making an enormous difference, in this life and the next:

1.) Standers’ eventual reconciliations with the spouse of their youth is slowly debunking  the legal myth of “irreconcilable differences”

One of “standerinfamilycourt’s” absolute favorite activities is collecting, organizing and resharing all of the miraculous testimonies of covenant families being put back together by the Lord God Almighty after decades of estrangement, and after intervening adulterous remarriages that even involved the birth of non-covenant children.

The divorce industry estimates this is roughly 5% of couples the legal system has forcefully estranged at the request of just one of the spouses.    To be sure, some of these reconciliations are sinful because the spouses involved still belong in God’s eyes to somebody else, namely the spouse of their youth.

But think of it:  1,000,000 marriages a year “dissolved” by the legal system for a span of 50 years since unilateral “no-fault” divorce was enacted in the 49 United States: that’s approaching 50 million marriages cumulatively, of which 5% is 2,500,000 “irretrievably broken” marriages nevertheless made whole again in that time span, over 40,000 for each state in the union.    Just imagine if even 1,000 restored constituent couples showed up to register a 5-minute testimony before the state legislative committee hearing, where a bill is being considered to restrict the availability of  “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for divorce only by mutual petition!   Will such a bill continue to be killed “off the record” in the Calendar Committee, as has been the case in Texas at least once since 2017?    Would mainstream news media dare to ignore a story like that?

2.) Standers’ celibacy (and typical financial sacrifice) acts like a vehicle-mounted bullhorn into the culture

Our culture has for centuries screamed that we are entitled to a sexual relationship throughout our lives, and therefore any law, moral or civil, that makes this less accessible is by definition harsh and unjust.     This was the siren song of the Catholic humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, who quite literally managed to stamp the Protestant Reformation with the ticking time bomb of family-destroying licentiousness.    Jesus begged to differ:

For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven….”    –  Matthew 19:12

Standers, if their motives are pure, always put eternal souls first in everything they undertake while their one-flesh spouse is off in the Far Country.

To be sure, it’s much easier not to be called a “divider of the brethren” by their pastor when they won’t go to that adulterous wedding, or won’t join that home group run by the adulterous couple who gives the most time and money to the church, or when they complain about the “marriage enrichment” class that’s scheduled featuring “the blended family pastor” being a bad influence on the flock.    It’s much easier not to have their adult children upbraiding them for not being “emotionally stable” enough to “move on” and stop causing conflict in the extended family when their one-flesh has “remarried” the estranged spouse of another living person.    It’s substantially less excruciating not to have to endure the pain and worry on the faces of our elderly parents who may well go to their graves wondering what’s going to happen to their child when we reach their age.   (Truth be told, it’s hard enough dealing with those emotional thoughts in our own hearts from time to time.)

The pastor who no longer has a congregation, as a direct consequence of refusing to “marry” another, after his covenant wife has left him to “marry” a more prosperous pastor, but who goes on to establish an enduring marriage permanence ministry while he’s replaced in his former church role by a shepherd who is indeed “the husband of more than one wife”–perhaps creates the loudest bullhorn of all.    But the congregation he was forced to leave may never fully understand the extent of their loss, this side of eternity.   Here, unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws have successfully attacked a church with its own doctrine, removing a godly pastor in the process and replacing him with a godless one who only has the veneer of “managing his family well”.

3.) Standers’ lifestyle is actually admired by the future policy makers of our nation

The future policymakers of our nation are increasingly the children and grandchildren of divorce.    They are some of the Sexual Revolution’s survivors.    In four years of readership responses to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce! , some of the best have come from those young people who are raising tiny children and still suffering from having too many “grandparents” in the picture.     They can’t believe someone would make the kind of sacrifice it takes to actually obey the bible.    They can’t believe the integrity of standers, compared to their own pastor.    They can’t believe what they weren’t taught in church that might have made a huge difference in their estranged parents’ marriages.    They can’t believe that they can yet draw a spiritual line in the sand in their own young family for the sake of their own children and grandchildren, and someone will stand with them.   Some can’t believe that a few mature people will say, “Judgment begins with the house of the Lord”,  so stop ragging on the gays when most of the heterosexuals are living in papered-over adultery.

“standerinfamilycourt” got the first taste of this in March, 2013 while attending the March For Marriage in Washington, D.C. organized by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).    A parade of well-spoken, far-seeing millennials took the platform and talked about how the corruption of marriage had impacted their own families of origin.   Many looked idealistically at the hope of repealing “no-fault” laws, recognizing that this was the vehicle that took the nation from “Point A” to where we now were, on that chilly early spring day when oral arguments were in progress at the Supreme Court for two same-sex marriage cases.     It wouldn’t be long before some of the rulings to follow, in the spate of 2014-2015 homosexual rights cases, would embolden a revival of judicial challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws by the aggrieved, and would strengthen legislative efforts for “family law” reform, which were also reviving after a period of dormancy, made more urgent as the culture continued to deteriorate.

As authors Leila Miller and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse capture in their respective books, these young adults grew up silenced and stifled to speak out against either their parents’ selfish personal choices or the government-promoted family fragmentation and sequential polygamy norm that prevailed in their church pews when they were growing up.    Now they see adults not only not hesitating to “diss” the blatantly unscriptural “blended family pastor”,  but also care so much about a return to 1st century biblical morality that they’re willing conspicuously to live it out in their own lives, in other words, to take up their cross and follow Christ.

Assuming the Lord stays His own hand of judgment long enough for the emerging voices in this generation to begin to have influence over their peers and the existing power structures, the pendulum will eventually swing back from the current cultural depravity.   We see  this even now, as a sizable percentage of this age group simply refuses to participate in the entrenched moral corruption.

4.)   Standers’ unselfish prayer life goes straight to God’s ear on behalf of the nation for which they are interceding

Every covenant marriage stander lives with the very real possibility that their prodigal spouse will die unrepentant in their sin and wind up in hell.   They live with the terrifying possibility that some or all of the children will emulate that parent, and meet the same eternal fate.   They wish they could evacuate all their progeny from this immoral culture that prevails even at church, and go colonize Mars, if that could but change the trajectory for their covenant family.    If they spend any time on their knees at all, they know that the situation was the result of demonic forces going all the way back to the snake in the Garden just before Eve bit the apple, and it’s going to take nothing less than God’s direct intervention to redeem any part of the situation.     

Paul warned the Corinthian and Ephesian churches (and by extension, us):

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.
– 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
– Ephesians 6:12

It’s not at all  fun to wear this armor.   With so much on the line for them personally, however, standers tend to have more motivation to faithfully, consistently and persistently do so.    Nobody wants to see their one-flesh life partner meet with the same fate as the rich man Jesus discusses at the end of Luke 16.

Meanwhile, God, who has been allowing a progressive series of ever more devastating (unheeded) judgments on the land over each of the past 5 decades since the enactment of civilly-forced divorce, along with legalized baby-murder and hireling behavior by His shepherds, is seeking for a reason not to go ahead and finalize His judgment.    Standers know this.    God finds various ways to keep reminding the community of covenant marriage standers that giving our nation over to its worst internal and external enemies is not His preferred choice of action, but the hour is very late, historically speaking.

Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?   Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”   –  Genesis 18: 23-25

 

5.) Standers are driving bible study much deeper than would be the case if this controversy over holiness did not exist in the church

Most Christians today assume that the myth that our founders “required” a rigid separation between church and state, while perceived as patently invalid when it comes to abortion or same-sex “marriage” being unacceptable, but when it comes to heterosexual marriage laws, they don’t see a substantial biblical issue.   That’s because our bibles have been altered over time by the social engineers of the last two centuries, who posed as seminarians.

We all thought for a long time that we could simply select a contemporary English bible version that made the text within clear and relatable, with lots of “trustworthy” commentary notes at the bottom, bring it home to the coffee table, crack it open once in a while, and trust it completely as guidance for our lives. In fact, since Christ died (we were told) for our past, present and future sins, we were “under grace”, even if our understanding, hence our obedience to it, was less than perfect on an ongoing basis.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, right?

Little did most of us know, that most contemporary renderings of Romans 8:1 omit a very crucial last phrase from that verse…

“…no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk by the Spirit and not according to the flesh.”

And though most of us knew that Luke 16:18 forbid remarriage after man’s divorce without any exceptions, we didn’t dare imagine that the next 13 verses containing the story of the rich man and Lazarus was an eternal warning against seeking “your best life now”, by doing such a thing, even though it was literally the next thought out of Christ’s mouth, wrapping up the conversation in Luke 16. Indeed, in most of our churches, one simply did not speak of hell, especially concerning anyone who had ever repeated the Sinner’s Prayer, no matter how they were currently living….much less connect the adultery repeatedly spoken of by Jesus with regard to remarriage, with the adultery spoken of by Paul in asserting that such will have no inheritance in the kingdom of God (“do not be deceived”).

Even though there were at least three recorded instances of Jesus Christ warning that for any man to “marry” any divorced woman was committing adultery, we were assured by celebrity seminary presidents that this was only a one-time act, “over with” on the wedding night, then covered by “grace” and duly forgotten by God who “hates divorce” (yet,  He allegedly “authorized” it for “biblical grounds” and allegedly was Himself “divorced”.)    We were further assured, given that “all authority is from God“, we must obey civil laws that conflict with God’s law, and that therefore, there are “greater” and “lesser” grades of adultery (adultery-lite, if you will, in the presence of civil paper) with differing eternal outcomes than would appear to be supported by our bibles.   We swallowed hard or scratched our heads at the blatant conflict between Matthew 5:32; 19:9 and Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18, but alas, the footnotes that might have shed some light in an earlier era, pre-1970’s…
Revised Standard Version, Second Edition of the New Testament, 1972 – Matthew 19:9

….were now being quietly removed by the Zondervans who stocked those bible bookshelves and cut the sales deals with Amazon. Most of us, having not attended bible school or seminary, having not been taught the history of the scripture manuscript texts, nor whose hands those texts passed through (including when and why), having not been taught how blatantly that which issues forth from today’s pulpits is at profound variance with the unanimous writings of the 1st through 4th century church fathers – many of them actually martyred, most of us never would have imagined the need to dig hard for ourselves into our study of the bible, in a way that goes all the way back to those texts in their original languages.    Most us didn’t at the time know the basis on which we truly needed to call out our denomination’s leadership when they changed their marriage doctrine in the 1970’s by a vote of the pastors, to accommodate unilateral “no-fault” divorce enactment.

Most of us had no idea that we couldn’t rely on the “scholars’ ” rendering of the koine Greek verb moods and tenses, where taking certain liberties could turn Christ’s or Paul’s meaning literally on its head, if it served to prop up the Sexual Revolution that was occurring in the church and had been ongoing since the 16th century for Protestants. (Without elaborating too much here, there is also irrefutable evidence that the same process was ongoing with Catholic bibles for the same reasons and in the same time frame. Try going to biblegateway.com and bringing up Matthew 19:9 in the old Douay-Rheims version, alongside the newer NABRE version, for just one illustration of this.)

All of that was until…. the civil law of the Sexual Revolution collided head-on with the holy matrimony unions of several clean-living seminarians who had a talent for research and writing, and also collided with a few bible school grads whose churches were censuring them for repenting of their adulterous civil-only unions by divorcing civil-only spouses who really belonged to someone else, and remaining celibate, upon their studious discovery of the undiluted truth about “marrying” the estranged spouse of another living person.   Thankfully for all of us, by the Lord’s hand, this was occurring with divinely-orchestrated timing, just when technology and online resources were drastically bringing down the cost of the requisite research tools, and removing various barriers to accessing those tools, as well as barriers to broadly communicating their findings to anyone who was interested. This at times has led to confirmation by pastors and linguists half a world away.  By then, there were at least tens of thousands of covenant marriage standers on social media who were looking for assurance that what the Holy Spirit was leading them in (intensely countercultural) was indeed backed by scripture they could test and research and confirm for themselves.

The books these scholars then wrote have been literal Godsends. When it becomes abundantly evident that we can’t trust the most acclaimed seminarians and publishers of the day, we must all assume responsibility for our own deep scholarship of original sources. We didn’t plan on any of this, but it’s not all bad. Bible study will probably never be “boring” again!

6.) Standers’ “saltiness” in remaining in a less-than-perfect church is affecting their pastor’s conscience, even if they’re seen by him as a “troublemaker”

“If you have a prayer request, volunteers are waiting to pray with you in the prayer room”, they said.   “Stop in before you leave.”

The stander thinks, “uh-huh, how am I going to ask Mr. & Mrs. Blended to join me in praying that my spouse will leave their adulterous remarriage, rebuild our covenant family,  escape hell by not dying in that ongoing state of sin, and set an example to our generations not to repeat his / her sin?”

This is just one of the many examples of the various crosses a stander bears to try and be salt and light in their local harlot church.   No stander should ever attempt to do this unless (1) they are exceptionally strong spiritually and uber-confident of who they are in the Lord,  and (2) the church is otherwise a strong discipling church where none of the pastors are living in that kind of sin.    If there is anyone in spiritual authority in that church who is “married” to somebody else’s spouse, the proper biblical response is to flee that kind of unbiblical leadership.

Generally, to do this for any length of time, standers need to have a very strong support network among the virtual (and occasionally-meeting) marriage permanence community.    If you hear your prodigal was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer, take it both places, by all means.   Prayer requests for the demise of your one-flesh’s adulterous “blended” household probably belong only in the stander community, at least until the prodigal is on his or her way home.   Or maybe not.   Be led by the Holy Spirit in deciding, and you will not fulfill the evil desires of the flesh.     

Some standers find themselves in trouble in bible studies and home groups.   It goes without saying that someone in an adulterous remarriage is not qualified to teach or lead in the church, yet nevertheless, it’s quite common that they do,  so the Lord will excuse a stander for declining to be under the leadership of such a person.

“Godly couples” in ongoing adultery with someone else’s spouse?
And is the “husband” onboard with leading this group?

However, some of the conflicts that might come up may not even involve questions of marriage.   For example, goaded for some weeks to join a “small group”,  and having received no response to a letter written to the senior pastor to orient him to the difficulty of a covenant marriage stander participating in a small group where couples in adulterous remarriages were also members, “standerinfamilycourt” decided to attend a large group under the leadership of one of the junior pastors.    This was a gathering of around 100 people in a church that is approaching mega church size. We were instructed to cluster according to the town we live in, resulting in a sub-group of around 15.    One man seemed to dominate the group, knew it all, and was a dogmatic Calvinist.    As he went on about the Holy Spirit being a “guarantee” that one cannot lose their salvation, “standerinfamilycourt” ventured to inform him of what the Greek text literally said (see comments above about deep bible study), that the original texts use the word “arrabōn (ἀρραβὼν)“, meaning down-payment.    Perhaps it was just the idea of a new face walking in and contradicting the man, but more likely, a lot of Christians were sold a comfy-system that they don’t want disturbed – ever.    Even so, perhaps a little seed was planted for the other 13 participants enticing them to delve a little deeper.

Standers have a couple of unique opportunities in such churches, nevertheless.   For example, why not volunteer to teach a generic class on applying hermeneutic principles to the study of scripture, how to use deep bible study tools found online, and the history of our bible texts to reconcile those areas where (usually manipulated) scripture seems to conflict with other scripture?

Some female standers with home space available have taken into their homes the young, abandoned wife with a baby — so that the church would not push her into an adulterous subsequent relationship using twisted scripture, rather than take on the church-wide responsibility to contribute to her longterm financial needs.

There are times when it is just not possible to stay in a church that does not subscribe to the no-excuses indissolubility of holy matrimony, according to scripture.   Other times, though it’s frequently uncomfortable, that’s still where the Lord would have us right now.    There’s very little chance that state legislative efforts cropping up in a few states to repeal “no-fault” grounds for divorce unless there’s mutual consent, will ever come up for a vote, much less pass and get signed into law, unless someone is there recruiting the pastor’s active support.    The pastors to affluent suburban communities are actually the ones needing the most encouragement to support these efforts.

7.) Standers are emboldening more pastors and priests to forsake false, comfortable teaching for Christ’s hard teachings, straight-up and undiluted

This part of the movement is blessedly growing, which may be the influence that eventually pulls our nation back from the brink.   Some of these pastors have experienced the walk of a stander, and the restoration of a God-joined holy matrimony union for themselves.     Either way, God is orchestrating quite a bit of cross-pollination which also crosses denominations.   It would be great to see these pastors begin engaging other pastors on “family law” reform, especially in states where a repeal or reform bill is active before the legislature.

– A Pennsylvania bible college president writes a book in 1957, a very disciplined hermeneutical masterpiece that the succeeding leadership of his evangelical denomination tried its best to keep buried deep in the bowels of their headquarters basement, even though at the time, it carried an endorsing foreword by the General Superintendent of that denomination.

– A Connecticut pastor in an intact original marriage who juggles his congregation, leadership of a K-12 school, and a weekly radio broadcast ministry…who confronts other pastors with Jeremiah 23 as needed, and calls out the adulterous legalized unions, urging physical repentance, is hopefully sending a few prodigal spouses home to their true mates.

– A young graduate student headed for pastorship in Colorado presents an unpopular scholarly paper to a group of peers on a Reformed campus in a western state, and also goes on to write a fiery book rebuking contemporary church leadership.    He follows his pastor father in a legacy of bringing the same message to retreats for covenant marriage standers and in other settings.

– A fiery black pastor in an intact original marriage regularly dishes unpopular truth out to his Philadelphia-headquartered megachurch and its global satellites.   His tone is far from “diplomatic”.

– A Milwaukee pastor in an intact original marriage realizes that government regulation of holy matrimony was never delegated by God, and in fact, Matthew 19:6,8 backs this pastor up completely.  He refuses to marry anyone under a civil marriage license, and teaches his flock alternative means to secure property and other rights in biblical marriage, while forgoing some of the government benefits that doing so entails.   God sees the weddings in this congregation as covenantally-binding all the same.

– A Canadian pastor in an intact original marriage commends a teenage girl in his congregation for walking in Paul’s 1 Corinthians 5 instructions while the guest of a church in the U.S. when she finds out that her host and hostess are in a “marriage” Jesus repeatedly called adulterous, and cuts the trip short because of it.

– An Ohio Baptist pastor in an intact original marriage refuses to perform any wedding he wouldn’t do right in front of Jesus Christ, and also refuses to take people already in those unions into this church as a couple, no exceptions, no excuses.

–  Another Ohio pastor in an intact original marriage gives up his Cincinnati church congregation on good terms when his conscience no longer permits him to perform weddings over people with living, estranged prior spouses, nor fellowship with people in such a union.   He tearfully apologizes to those he has done the wrong to in performing their biblically-unlawful marriage, then departs to form a house church and weekly conference call supportive of the stander community and reconciliation of holy matrimony unions.  He writes a landmark book on the topic that carries a spirit of gentleness and truth.

– Another Baptist pastor in Arizona openly rebukes several pastors and leaders of large media ministries who are divorcing their covenant wife to “marry” an adulteress,  and all too often, one who is another man’s legally-estranged wife.

– A famous evangelist in the Charismatic movement reconciles with his covenant wife instead of getting entangled in the pursuing attentions of a serially polygamous female “pastor”.    (She went on to other infamous exploits, enough said.)

– A Florida pastor in a long marriage with a widow who gave up his congregation to write two landmark books on the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony and the invalidity of subsequent civil marriages while an original estranged spouse is alive, including the required means of repentance.

– A soft-spoken seminary graduate on the east coast writes a very important scholarly and historical book, and accompanying historical paper before he himself marries, then later finds himself standing for his own marriage, and experiencing a God-orchestrated reconciliation in some very difficult circumstances.

– A Houston pastor in an intact marriage who uses his blog to patiently teach principled hermeneutics on a weekly basis.

– A courageous African Cardinal stands up to Pope Francis’ plans to allow civilly-divorced and remarried parishioners (who have estranged prior spouses from valid marriages still living) to take communion, and to further liberalize “annulment” practices.

– A Virginia pastor leaves the legal profession to establish a marriage permanence church and family integrity radio broadcast.

Are these diverse shepherds “harsh”, “unloving”, “Pharisaical”, “unmerciful”, “unpastoral”, “pushing a ‘works-based’ salvation” ?    
No, unlike most of their peers who adhere to the majority opinion, they’re simply focusing on eternal souls, and eternal outcomes.    They are the handful who are fulfilling Christ’s instructions to “feed my sheep”. The law of this territory is that souls are more important than feelings, once forced to make a choice between the two.   Being “pastoral” utterly fails if most of the sheep don’t ever make it back into the right (eternal) fold.   Pastors like this act as a voice of conscience to all other pastors, even in the midst of a denouncing and reviling response from them.   Pastors like this remind everyone, from the county court judge to the Pope, that even if “possession is 9/10ths of the (civil) law”,  Jesus echoed John the Baptizer in the firm rebuke that such possession never exceeds 0/10ths of GOD’s law.   Taking it to the next level, “standerinfamilycourt” would like to challenge these exemplary pastors to consider that “the law is a teacher”,  and take the case to their state capitol (preferably with a church bus full of like-minded saints),  so that we can get back to the days when people didn’t typically go to hell for much more than not knowing Jesus.  Just imagine the character of your congregations  if murder or rape or theft were legal!   You are the “salt” of the pastorates, so please do for biblical marriage what you’ve always been willing to do for the sanctity of life.    We stand very little chance of success repealing this abomination in 50 states without the solid support of church leadership!   

“standerinfamilycourt” would like to close with this:  how many laws would ever get enacted, or how many immoral laws would remain on the books if everyone knew that availing ourselves of that particular law would send us to hell?    How many legislators would vote for a law like that if they could see people in the hell-flames for observing it?   How many would refuse to vote for repeal of such a law, or conspire to keep its repeal from coming to a general vote of our state representatives?   We have immoral civil laws as a result of the traditions of men that were built around sincerely-believed and long-unquestioned heresies, such as Chapter 24 (V, VI) of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which forms the basis for the (extrabiblical) fault-based grounds for civil divorce.  Having answered this question, apart from the example of standers conspicuously devoting their lives to the restored wholeness of their covenant families,  snatching people from those flames, and willingly bucking the contemporary taboo against even speaking of hell, how else would the world ever find out that this is actually the case, according to God’s word?

And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’  But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.     –  Luke 16:24-25

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!