Monthly Archives: June 2019

citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Standers, Are We “Reluctantly Divorced”…Or Immorally Abandoned Under Force of Law?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..”
– Proverbs 23:7

“standerinfamilycourt” has devoted the past nearly 5 years connecting the community of covenant marriage standers with other communities of Christians and social conservatives who are committed to peeling back the Sexual Revolution and reforming U.S. “family laws” in an example to the rest of the Western world.  Some of these allies are in differing faith traditions, and some of those individuals have a huge leg up on the stander community in terms of their national influence and basic ability to be heard politically.   Others are in “remarriages”, and some are in both situations.  This effort to find common ground for the common good has been met with “mixed reviews” on all sides at various times.   That’s OK with SIFC, who can handle it if some effectiveness is gained, and authentic covenant standers thereby gain a voice in the reform process they would not otherwise have.   Our brand of Christian discipleship has been pasted and smeared as a “cult” for long enough!  As for our reluctant (and sometimes embarrassed) allies, we hope Jesus’ voice comes through a bit clearer than if we were not visible in their lives and in their sense of mission.

For this reason, SIFC travelled to Lake Charles, Louisiana at the end of April to participate in the Ruth Institute’s “Summit for Survivors of the Sexual Revolution”.     You can read more about that terrific event  in this earlier blog post.   About a year or so prior to that, a post by “Ruth’s” founder,  Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, struck this “reluctant divorcee” as (well)… trivializing…and misrepresenting God’s truth.    She had referred to standers as the “reluctantly divorced” in some new pamphlets she was calling attention to at the time.     The Ruth Institute’s work and publications are important, both as the only significant, consistent national voice for repeal of unilateral divorce laws, but also as a well-published, well-respected social science organization, having this past year added an academic statistician to their staff.   Both terms. “reluctantly” and “divorced”, reflect offensively to many of those who, first of all, don’t believe we are “divorced” in God’s eyes, because our wayward and estranged spouse is still alive (Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39; Matthew 19:8),  and even if they weren’t alive, with full biblical justification, we would regard ourselves as widowed, not divorced.     Dr. Morse graciously asked at that time, what alternative label would be more acceptable to the covenant marriage stander community, so SIFC asked some standers in a social media private group for their input.   It proved to be a tough exercise to come up with something crisp and concise that was adequately reflective of the conscience violation experienced as a result of man’s laws being in direct opposition to God’s laws on marriage.   There was no male input volunteered at the time, but about five ladies offered input.    The common theme was “forcibly divorced against our conscience”.     The majority of standers did not seem to object to the “divorced” label, however, as much as they objected to the “reluctantly” label.    At least one of these ladies, if not two, had also been forced through an “annulment” by the Roman Catholic Church so that their “ex-spouse” could marry the adulteresses (who had coveted their husbands and broken up their homes) and take communion in that church.    The inquiry results were messaged back to Dr. Morse late in 2017.

Those who truly believe Christ’s words, “from the beginning it was never so!”  don’t believe that man’s various contrivances to disobey God and create distance or sundering, or legal attempts to sever the supernatural one-flesh (Greek: sarx mia) entity are actually real.     Those attempts constitute the heinous presumption to speak for God, the superior party in an unconditional covenant with the one-flesh entity which His hand has created between true husband and wife.   Although the Ruth Institute is a Catholic organization that retains some doctrine around marriage indissolubility, the Roman Catholic Church holds to a watered-down official version that allows for “annulments” , sometimes years or decades later, wherein they claim that some impediment not known at the time of the wedding caused God not to join or covenant with that union.   Many a spouse is “reluctantly” exposed to an even worse set of church papers making the false and presumptuous claim that God didn’t join their marriage for reason “x”–after all the persecution, larceny and perjury they endured in “family court”.     To such a stander, what’s being described as “reluctance” feels more like gang rape and moral conscience violation!     “Reluctance” is a response to something you didn’t want but eventually acquiesced to, (as one male stander put it).  One cannot conscionably say such a thing about gang rape without inevitably slandering and demoralizing the victim in the process.   In Dr. Morse’s case, we know the injury is not intentional, but is due to an “out-of-synch” frame of reference arising from personal theology and personal marital history.     As she publicly acknowledged at the Summit, she first learned of our movement and its general contours through SIFC less than 5 years ago.

#RuthSummit 2019 was all about giving a voice to those victimized by the social and political “narrative” of the Sexual Revolution.     As SIFC found out, however, there are limits to that voice in public if printed materials are in the inventory of said nonprofit, which are(unwittingly and unfortunately) bolstering one of the key tenets of that narrative.    In response to a post of one of the videos where an adult child of divorce (neither of whose parents, she reports, were actually “reluctant”) gave her testimony at the April Summit, under a banner that read “Reluctantly Divorced Panel”,  SIFC again commented about the offensiveness and inaccuracy of this label to some of those being referred to by it:

“I’m thankful for Dr. Morse and all her efforts, but feel the term ‘reluctantly divorced’ seriously trivializes Christian standers. Standers stand in the first place because they believe Jesus when He said, “from the beginning it [man’s divorce] was not so!”
Most standers, by essence, don’t consider themselves “divorced” in God’s eyes, but rather immorally abandoned by both the law and their spouse.

I guess you could call *forcibly and morally violated* “reluctant”, but it’s kind of like saying someone was “reluctantly raped”. Would you say that to a rape victim? I sure wouldn’t!

Happy to have been in the room for Christy’s riveting testimony, and it made me so thankful that my husband and I raised our children to adulthood before the troubles started.”

This was not said on her page nor the Ruth Institute page, but on activist Jeff Morgan’s personal wall, without any idea that Dr. Morse would take it as a personal, hostile “swipe”, especially after our earlier exchange on the topic.    The PM that arrived the next day was unsettling, (in part: )

“…could you do me the kindness of not picking a fight with me in public? criminey. You’ve made your point privately…I’ve agreed with you in many ways. I cannot go back and retract all that material. Plz. I’m under enough pressure as it is. ” 

It occurred to “standerinfamilycourt” that perhaps this public statement could reasonably be faulted for not legitimately speaking for all covenant marriage standers, or a sufficiently large swath of them to have merited the comment.    That hadn’t been objectively tested, to be honest.  The comment was based on the open-ended input of the prior small group of ladies.  Out of a group page membership of 300-some, only those who agreed probably volunteered input, after all.    So….it was back to the polls to validate whether SIFC should have just let it go for the sake of feelings and friendship.

This time a formal poll with choices was set up on four different standers pages,  most of them open pages this time, including one UK page.     This has yielded some very interesting observations, and has this time had good input from male standers.  The following, from the most active set of responses was typical of the input from the other pages where the poll ran….

As everyone can see, a slight majority did say “No Big Deal”.    The second most frequent response was that quite a few were unaware of the issue at all.   Upward of a third of standers responding overall reflected a strong negative response to being labeled a “reluctant divorcee”, and one registered a mild negative response.      Those who responded that they were unaware of the label (who does that?) were invited to go back and make an additional selection.    So far, none have, so the implication is that this unaware group also did not feel that strongly about it, perhaps half of all covenant marriage standers who are standing for the marriage of their youth.    Those who also gave verbal comments about what they’d prefer as a label echoed the responses of a year ago,  responding a bit more negatively to the “reluctant” part (feeling that “forcibly” better reflected the conscience violation they suffered), than the “divorced” part of the label.   Those who felt “trivialized” or “demeaned” tended to object to both parts of the label.    Most of the really negative responses came from men, which is understandable, because they’ve been stripped of their God-assigned (and accountable) role toward their own flesh and blood (including – scripturally – their estranged and possibly “remarried” wife), while having done nothing objectively wrong to deserve this outcome.   One of the men commented:

“ I don’t like ‘reluctant’ It’s like we went along with it even though we didn’t want to.

I prefer Unwillingly Divorced.”

His comments drew 4 “likes”, out of a total of 13 responders in that group post.

Overall,  among the 4 group posts, there were 25 unique responses, breaking down as follows, by degree of perceived offensiveness:

Who Does That?  – 24%  (6 responses)
No Big Deal – 28%  (7 responses)
Mildly Annoyed – 4%  (1 response)
Demeaned  – 20%   (5 responses)
Trivialized   – 24%  (6 responses)

Due to varying beliefs, the covenant marriage standers are far from a monolithic group of saints.  Several interesting preliminary observations can be drawn from these results.   First, it appears that nearly 75% of this community is aware of and integrated with the activities and communications of external groups who are engaged in various aspects of “family law” and moral cultural reform, a very gratifying result, following almost 5 years of this blogger’s labors  behind the keyboard and in conferences.    Indeed, many in this community watched the #RuthSummit simulcast in April and several others have reported watching the videos.    Secondly, the ones who responded “No Big Deal” tended to be the ones who believe that scriptures like 1 Corinthians 7:11 make reconciliation with a repenting wayward spouse completely optional according to preference, should the opportunity present, rather than morally imperative per scriptures like Matthew 18:23-35, 2 Corinthians 5:18 (and others).    So long as they remain celibate until their prodigal spouse’s physical death, “they’re good with God”, in their own estimation.   For them, the sense of conscience violation from having a paper “dissolution” forced upon them is much fainter, even if their sense of personal injury remains very great indeed.  Thirdly, while close to 50% overall posted some degree of a negative response to the “reluctant divorcee” label, they were almost all men.  They are the ones who feel the most responsibility for their blocked role as the undershepherd of the family sheep assigned by God to their personal care, and they are the ongoing forgivers in the group.   It is interesting that all four of the respondents on the UK group page actually live in North America, where the process timelines for unilateral family-shredding are counted in days or months rather than the 5 years the process currently takes in the UK.     The sample responses, to the best of SIFC’s knowledge were all from evangelicals, with no currently practicing or nominal Catholics, and a small number of former Catholics responding.

One may rightly ask, “Is 25 a representative sample size with respect to all covenant marriage standers?”    We need to first clarify what a covenant marriage stander is, for those who don’t regularly follow this blog.    A covenant marriage, per scripture, is the marriage of our youth or its widowed replacement, without regard to any religious test, where there is no prior estranged spouse still living:  a never-married or widowed man with a never-married or widowed woman.    A covenant stander is someone who has  been declared “divorced” under the laws of men, but who is remaining celibate in obedience to Christ, even after their spouse “remarries” under the laws of men.    As shown above in the results, the actual motives for remaining celibate until widowed or reconciled can and do vary considerably, which impacts whether the term “reluctant divorcee” causes them injury and offense.  To answer our question about sample size, we need to first estimate how many of these there are in the online world.    An imperfect but reasonable way to gauge that is to estimate that covenant marriage standers have historically run about 10% of all religious standers, including those who “stand” for the subsequent “remarriage” of their personal preference, or for the most recent of them.    The largest marriage permanence ministries do not tend to filter out people who are standing for “remarriages”,  preferring a “wheat and tares” approach to running their ministries.   These typically have about 20,000 followers at any given time.

Based on these assumptions, a reasonable estimate of the total number of English-speaking covenant standers is around 2,000 globally, give or take.   The U.S. divorce lawyers tell us that of the slightly less than 1,000,000 U.S. civil divorces occurring each year, about 5% of them or 50,000 couples per year eventually reconcile.    As mentioned, there are significantly more noncovenant standers, hence noncovenant reconciliations of varying durations just in the U.S., and this is true regardless of the durability of the reconciliation.    It is somewhat possible that there are up to 5,000 covenant marriage standers just in the U.S.,  as an upper bound, which would include (and perhaps be dominated by) practicing Catholics who may still believe in some mitigating, extrabiblical doctrines such as “nullity” and “purgatory” which, in turn, would be directly relevant to their feelings about the severity of conscience violation.   Based on our estimate of the covenant marriage stander population, we only received a tenth of the responses (at best) we really needed for the results to be reasonably representative of all covenant marriage standers who are online, so we can’t claim these results as being scientific, only indicative of the justification to say something about the injuriousness of the “reluctant divorcee” label.  That indicated reliable sample size actually coincides with the typical size of most such group page (overlapping) memberships of covenant standers, so close to 100% group participation would be required to get there with scientific assurance.   Some of those groups do have a fair number of practicing Catholics in their membership who may not believe that dying while in a non-widowed “remarriage” necessarily sends everyone to hell, so may be less motivated to respond to the poll, or would respond “No Big Deal” if they did respond.   By no means were Catholics deliberately excluded.  The poll will be kept open indefinitely, and this post updated if results change as more responses are gathered.   This initial sample was gathered over about 36 hours’ time.    SIFC did not run this poll on Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional due to the large number of very “loyal” trolls and non-standers who follow our community page.

With all the statistical boredom out of the way about the impact of the reluctant divorcee label on the covenant stander community, adding to the trauma of at least hundreds of people who are praying for their spouse’s complete repentance and removal from legalized subsequent unions that could send them to hell as rebels against the kingdom of God,  “standerinfamilycourt” will now share the response given privately to Dr. Morse:

“I honestly didn’t think about your printed materials inventory.   I was just hoping to raise some awareness.   I do realize there’s also some theological differences probably involved as well in this situation.  I didn’t do it maliciously, or with any intent to discredit you, only a strong sense that standers are being misrepresented in direct proportion to our belief of scripture.

“I’m sorry you were offended, Dr. Morse, but some of us have been suffering dignity blows on top of gaping wounds for a long time.  I hope you’ll give some thought to the point itself.  I must sing your praises in public in at least a 10:1 ratio. 

“Most sincere longtime standers do not believe human authorities have any say from God over marriage, and that He has never recognized divorce for anyone.  To hear a national figure repeatedly affirm the immoral civil law as “truth” and its impact as “mild and recoverable” is hurtful. And most of us wish others could see the magnitude of the religious human rights violation being forcibly “divorced” (that is, immorally abandoned with legal sanction) represents.  The ugly reality is we were the guinea pigs for everything happening now to everyone else on the religious rights front, but almost everyone remains clueless about that.  It’s like the famous Niemoller quote, but an extra line could be appended: 

‘…then they came for me…(but still nobody cared about the Jews…”)  …except God who is dealing with the whole nation accordingly and will not be appeased.’  

“This Equality Act…which we might get to dodge for another 2 or 6 years if there’s no national repentance, is literally going to be Congress doing to all other Christian consciences what was done to us by our state legislatures.  Time is getting short and we’re all under pressure.  I hope my sense of urgency at raising awareness can ultimately be forgiven.   Who knows how much longer biblical, pro-family voices will have a non-criminalized voice?   FB just shut down my advertising account today after almost 5 successful years, for submitting ads on a weekly basis that ‘violate their policies’ (many of which they approved and ran anyway, taking the money).”    [End of response]

The Ruth Institute certainly has no lack of pressure, engaged as it is with dividing time between longterm non-political activities aimed at chipping away at the root disease culturally, and a flurry of other activities managing and reporting the plethora of festering symptoms, including the significant fallout in the Roman Catholic Church, from which the bulk of that pressure currently emanates.    They manage to do a superb job with what they have to work with.  “standerinfamilycourt”, on the other hand, is lock-focused on going straight after the root disease politically and culturally, and feels most acutely the pressure from the ticking clock of history repeating itself, while ministering in the background to many of its most overlooked and discounted wound victims.    There isn’t going to be perfect congruence of efforts, but that needn’t prevent an effective working alliance nor should feedback feel threatening to either effort.   It is effective and necessary for “Ruth” to retain and build the support of Roman Catholic leadership, while finding some way to work effectively with the sola scriptura crowd that sustains the covenant marriage movement.

One of the featured speakers at #RuthSummit was Leila Miller, author of the book “Primal Loss” which gathered a lot of data about adult children of divorce who feel marginalized for cultural and political reasons to fit the false narratives that “children are resilient” and “parents deserve to be happy in their love life”.
Her 70 responses were heavily weighted toward trauma, hence she gained an influential platform through the Ruth Institute and Catholic media to speak out for them.     The trauma of covenant marriage standers from false labels and politically-correct assumptions is just as real, but that trauma doesn’t fit very well the counter-narrative that all children deserve to grow up in a home with both biological parents, no matter what.    That “no matter what” invalidly excludes concerns about the prior conflicting rights of covenant children and grandchildren at whose expense such an ideal necessarily comes, and with scripture-based beliefs about heaven and hell which may conflict with Roman Catholic beliefs or doctrines, or may even conflict with the dominant,  politically “safe” evangelical view of those things.   The very least someone pursuing an effective, engaged coalition can do is listen to this kind of inconvenient feedback without taking offense or presuming malicious intent.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
– 2 Corinthians 5:18

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, family law, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Do Not Be Deceived, God Is Not Mocked – Deuteronomy 24 Revisited

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by Standerinfamilycourt

For both prophet and priest are polluted;
Even in My house I have found their wickedness,” declares the Lord.
…Moreover, among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing:
They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray.
 “Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing:
The committing of adultery and walking in falsehood;
And they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
So that no one has turned back from his wickedness.
All of them have become to Me like Sodom,
And her inhabitants like Gomorrah.

– Jeremiah 23: 11, 13-14

“standerinfamilycourt” should have been absolutely elated and jumping for joy when a leading Christian activist for repeal of unilateral, “no-fault” divorce in Texas recently posted these two YouTube videos of marriage permanence sermons delivered in the past few days in a large Dallas-area megachurch.    Not only did this pastor muster the courage to deliver the “u-haul sermon”  without the usual fawning apologies for stepping on congregational toes, but he….

– delivered this in a very engaging, winsome way….
– based it on the sermon on the mount, with mostly correct, accurate insights in at least the first video about the purpose and effects of TSOM…
– effectively set aside all the usual cultural excuses (except one) for Christians living contrary to what Christ clearly taught…
– acknowledged, albeit a bit hollowly,  that the one-flesh entity is created only by God’s hand….
– actually vocalized the term “serial monogamy” in a denouncing tone…
– admitted that denominations, pastors and churches had sold out due to cowardice on this topic, both politically and in church…and
– admitted that God’s laws cannot be escaped simply by ignoring them.

It was clear that some combination of marriage permanence authors, covenant marriage standers, and our friend, the activist were having a meaningful influence on this pastor, and perhaps on others like him.    But… since SIFC’s focus is on the souls involved, and then on legal reforms needed to redeem our nation (in that order), no rejoicing was actually possible.    The activist is in a second “marriage” while the wife of his youth, who divorced him and “remarried” first, still lives.    His second “wife” is actually another man’s estranged one-flesh wife.    Both shepherd and sheep here labor under the delusion of a “safe harbor” presumed to be found in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and the (hireling) shepherd made another video in 2015 stating that the only conditions under which he will officiate a wedding over someone with a living, estranged spouse is when said spouse has “remarried” first under the immoral civil laws of men.    Says he (applaudably), he’s motivated and convicted by the need to steer clear of hindering family reconciliation, but (shamefully), when man’s paper has covered over an immoral relationship, reconciliation is thereafter and forevermore deemed “impossible”, apparently finding at long last something too hard for God.

It’s obvious, of course, why such a pastor’s position would be immensely attractive to somebody who now is in the “remarried” position our activist friend finds himself in, and who may have arrived there 95% innocently (5% was the Holy Spirit putting a check in his spirit that went unheeded), and who might conceivably make a very different decision today based on what he’s learned since.    Such teaching is also irresistible to a Christian who has an unadmitted and unconfronted forgiveness problem because the treatment they got in the divorce process was so ugly, and the ongoing damages so deep.   Boy, if we can find a basis to believe that God made an exception for us and replicated that one-flesh entity between #2 and us, because by “remarriage”, #1 severed the prior supernatural one-flesh entity, what a relief!

Tellingly, there is no early church writing that shows those leaders interpreting Deuteronomy 24 as preventing covenant family wholeness after a spouse has returned from taking up legal residence in the “Far Country”.     Those true shepherds didn’t preach “permanence”, instead they preached indissolubility.    “Permanence” has the potential to cement in an immoral legalized relationship and keep us out of heaven.   Indissolubility cements in holiness and automatically invalidates that subsequent relationship in every case.

Deuteronomy 24 seems to make man’s divorce “real”, notwithstanding what Jesus said directly to the contrary in  Matthew 19:8, and seems to forbid our ever reconciling, all in one!    Or does it?     What does the bible actually say about that?

There is a strong reason SIFC led off the early 2016 “debunk” series with Deuteronomy 24 as the second blog in the series, immediately after hermeneutically laying the scriptural foundation found in Matthew 19:6 for the no-excuses life-long indissolubility of holy matrimony.    The “marital unfaithfulness”  exception clause arguments that had, for 100 years or so, manipulated Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 were wearing thin and were causing a portrayal of Christ as contradicting Himself – which is to be expected when there’s pre-1800’s concordance evidence still lying around showing that the Greek word “porneia” never has accurately translated into a post-marital sin.   Arguments from 1 Corinthians 7 around abandonment or “abuse” even more rapidly wear thin when Paul is portrayed within the very same bible chapter as contradicting himself.    The sheer genius of satan in elevating the Deuteronomy 24 argument as the new “go-to” strawman argument is, that this one is far more challenging to de-bunk.    Attempts to do so are subject to criticism that if Moses said it, how can it not be God-breathed?    How could Christ contradict Moses (though He very clearly did!) if He came to “fulfill the law” ?   Successfully debunking Deuteronomy 24 marriage heresies also requires a firm reliance on two doctrines (the true nature of one-flesh, and the true nature of the holy matrimony covenant),  that Christ preached, but no pastor today (well, no more than 7 or 8 pastors today) dare preach!   Our 2016 post covered all that, and more.

Upon further reflection since writing that original post, a few additional hermeneutic problems with Deuteronomy 24 have come to light that weren’t addressed in the earlier post, and SIFC has conferred with a couple of other gifted, Spirit-led scholars who contributed some good further insights.    An update at this time seems quite warranted to bring these new items forward, though every word of the old post remains just as valid as when they were penned three years ago.

Pastor Todd Wagner of Watermark Church treats Deuteronomy 24 as creating an all-time prohibition against returning to a covenant marriage after one of the spouses (evidently, without regard to which one) has remarried.   He justifies this by citing the desirability of “outlawing serial monogamy”, parroting  as he does all the conventional liberal commentators.   The implication in this sermon is of the wife remarrying, but “standerinfamilycourt” is willing to bet the farm that he actually applies it on a unisex basis in determining which subsequent weddings he’s willing to officiate over people whose true spouse is still living.    Is this valid, based on the face content and context of the Torah scripture?    Is it valid to extrapolate a Mosaic regulation which Christ actually abrogated in Matthew 5, to New Covenant practice?    If we must extrapolate and extend this Mosaic regulation, why then is eating shellfish OK today, along with not stoning our disobedient children to death?

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is isolated from the rest of the marriage regulatory commandments Moses delivered in Deuteronomy 22, in a chapter that deals the rest of the time with non-marriage topics.    This fact alone should be treated with a certain level of care and deference in attempting to apply it broadly.   While the regulation in Deuteronomy 22 was fairly comprehensive and was broadly applicable, the instruction in Deuteronomy 24 is a conditional set of nested “if” statements aimed at narrowly regulating an evil practice.  That means, “if” the first condition (“when…”) is not met, there is no need to apply the second “if” condition, nor the subsequent ones.   Ditto for the third condition, if the 2nd one is not met, and so on.    With each iteration, the hermeneutically-responsible scope of application becomes narrower and narrower.    Unfortunately for our “remarried” activist friend, this means his situation will fall out of the logic at some point, and in fact, it does so in an early round.     Unfortunately for this pastor he admires, it should be obvious that Deuteronomy 24 cannot be applied on a unisex basis.   It is gender-specific for a purposeful reason, and that reason is not, as he suggests, prohibiting all covenant reconciliations, for all time.    It behooves us to look into what that purposeful reason for the regulation actually was, and keep investigating until the results square with all that Jesus (and His Apostle) clearly said to the contrary later on.

“standerinfamilycourt” commented on the facebook post:

When pastors “truth engineer”, it’s called EISEGESIS.   In the first 7 or 8 minutes of this — which are excellent to a point, we start seeing the eisegesis creep in when this pastor substitutes “intention” for “commandment” and when he focuses on this life going well, instead of eternal consequences of dying in a sinful relationship. If his theory were correct, there would have been no reason for Malachi, chapter 2, nor Ezra, chapters 9 and 10.   Furthermore, if this man’s theory were correct, the U.S. church and nation would not be under such harsh, advanced judgment from the Lord, whereby the salt (Matt. 5:13) has lost its savor (and we’re on the brink of losing our Bill of Rights and national sovereignty) — no longer good for anything except being trampled under foot.  The last several minutes of this video are a sophisticated, full-throated abuse of Deut. 24:1-4 which has several issues hermeneutically.

We know that Matt. 19:6 and 8 were not mere “intentions” because the imperative mood was consistently used, and because Jesus had just gone into the metaphysical reason (Greek: sarx mia, sunezeuxen) why there is no paper “divorce” even possible, hence no release from the ongoing adultery Christ repeatedly spoke of that always results [“EVERYONE who marries one who has been put away enters into a state of ongoing adultery” – Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18-31].   As a result, people are still being deceived (even if the standards are a bit tighter these days in a few churches), and God IS still being mocked.  One can never walk by the Spirit while coveting and retaining some other living person’s God-joined spouse, and while forever rejecting one’s own God-joined spouse, and while bearing false witness about who our God-joined spouse is.   Genesis 15:8-17 illustrates the true nature of this unconditional covenant of holy matrimony, because it shows that the inferior (human) party can only violate that covenant, but can never break or dissolve it by any act short of physical death.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Until pastors realize that divorce causes people to die in legalized adultery and permanent irreconciliation with their God-joined spouse, and that dying this way always sends them to hell, churches will never be adequately onboard with the repeal of unilateral divorce laws sufficiently to prevail in repealing them in all 50 U.S. states.

I wish this pastor, who clearly means well, could meet Pastor Ray McMahon, or Pastor Stephen Wilcox, or Pastor Casey Whitaker, or Pastor Gino Jennings, or Pastor Phil Schlamp, or Dr. Joseph Webb.

Final thought: so long as pastors still continue to tickle ears by framing their messages humanistically, they are going to continue to miss the mark. Humanism has always been 100% incompatible with authentic discipleship — which is why we’re hearing about the evils of “divorce” far more than we’re hearing about the evils of “remarriage” and why dying in this sin is not being connected (unconscionably) with its eternal consequences the way Jesus connected them, and the way Paul connected them. Such things can only be preached theistically.

Some of the “truth engineering” going on with pastors who have run clean out of other arguments (directly due to increased awareness of lay disciples around sound principles of hermeneutics) for not urging people out of their covetous, legalized immoral relationships is the anti-Christ myth that once there’s paper around an immoral relationship, it is “sinful” to restore the covenant family. This saves a lot of embarrassment and public admission of wrongdoing when a hireling shepherd has defied Christ and performed an adulterous wedding. God still knows whom He has and HASN’T joined into the sarx mia entity, and with whom He is the superior party in an unconditional covenant (see Gen. 15:8-17). This popular heresy is the evangelical counterpart to the RCC’s God-mocking vehicle of “annulment”.

Further comments left on the YouTube videos (6/21/2019):

He’s on the right track (sort of) by appealing to the sermon on the mount… Piper is 98% truth, 2% heresy. This guy might be 99% truth, 1% heresy, but the standard in the kingdom of God is 0% heresy, because we’ve been given the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we would not mock God without internal misery from doing so.

The last several minutes are a sophisticated, full-throated abuse of Deut. 24:1-4 which has several issues hermeneutically: its conditionality (nested if’s), its murky scope, clearer NT scriptures from the mouth of Jesus that directly contradict, its gender application, the extrapolation of the “land” from Israel (for a specific, temporary OT purpose) to the U.S.A. — to name just a few of the hermeneutical issues.

If Jesus wanted Deut. 24 to be His standard for marriage “permanence” under the Messianic Covenant, He would never have bypassed that scripture and headed straight for Genesis 2:21 when He discussed it in Matt. 19.

 To this pastor’s credit, he alludes to the commandment nature @~2:30 when he says “…tariff engineering might allow you to escape the government’s ire, but truth engineering does not allow you to escape the Lord’s ‘intent’..”   He purports to tell us why, without ever getting to the true reason why: the consequences are eternal, Jesus tells us twice in no uncertain terms, not just temporal.   An “inescapable intent” is by its very nature a commandment , with an eternal consequence for disobeying and never truly repenting.

“The best way to interpret scripture is with scripture” is true enough, but this can and does still lead to error and humanistic bias, if all of the other hermeneutic principles (content, culture, context, and consultation) are ignored. Accuracy in this hermeneutical endeavor requires an accurate starting point to which all other scripture must be compared. Obviously this must begin with the words of Jesus, and it should provide the “why” not just a “what”. Then, after that, it must be 100% in line with everything else Jesus said (He was never schizophrenic – if He said something, there was a serious, eternal reason for it) not only on the topic, but on related heaven-or-hell topics like unforgiveness, irreconciliation, returning evil for evil, the externally-imposed requirement for a disciple to live as a eunuch, etc. In my opinion, the only thing Jesus said about the permanence of marriage that meets ALL of these conditions is… Matthew 19:6, 8

“So they are no longer [ never again , by the verb tense] two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate [literally, put distance between]…Because of your hardness of heart MOSES permitted you to divorce [send away] your wives; but from the beginning it has not [ ever – by the verb tense] been this way.”

This is in the imperative voice and is therefore a commandment, not merely an “ideal” or “intention”.   It was on this basis that John the Baptizer told Herod “it is not lawful for your to have your brother’s wife.” Had he said, “God is really disappointed with you that you divorced your wife and married your brother’s ‘ex’, so try to stay faithful to her, OK?” he most likely would not have lost his head.

This, of course, is profoundly unpopular in Christendom because it significantly raises the moral standard from “permanence” (which makes all civilly-legal heterosexual marriages theoretically interchangeable morally – “love the one you’re with” ) …to absolute, no-excuses indissolubility . Further, it paints figures like Luther and Calvin as the moral heretics they actually were. It shines an intense light on the immoral living arrangements of many pastors, not to even mention the current POTUS and VPOTUS.

This pastor has said in a previous video that he officiates “weddings” over the legally-estranged-already-married.   He rationalizes (presumably based on gross eisegesis around Deuteronomy 24:1-4) that reconciliation is “impossible” in those cases.   Not only does this fallacy contradict Christ on several of those closely-related heaven-or-hell topics, empirical cases of believers putting their covenant families back together after a series of adulterous remarriages, even where the faux, paper “spouses” are still alive
( #somuch4irreconcilabledifferences on Facebook)… show that God engineers these reconciliations quite miraculously.   Why? Because He is not willing that any should perish, but everyone come to the knowledge of the truth!  Why?  Because He Himself is the superior party in the unconditional holy matrimony covenant — and out of 267 unconditional covenants mentioned in the bible from Genesis to Revelation, no theologian has ever been able to show a single instance where God failed to uphold the covenant or where He entered into a competing one.

That’s precisely what Malachi, chapter 2 is about. When that OT “pastor” divorced his wife and “married” another woman, it clearly broke fellowship with God until renouncement and repentance took place, but it did not break the original covenant itself:

“…I stand as a witness between you and the wife of your youth … she IS (not “was”) the companion of your marriage covenant…”

Make no mistake, pastors who defy God by performing weddings over the already-married-for-life, and who refuse to apologize for misusing the Lord’s name to perform a vain act , and who refuse to counsel these people to sever these papered-over immoral relationships so that they can recover their inheritance in the kingdom of God, will share in the coming judgment because they acted as a hireling (John 10:12-13; Ezekiel 34; Jeremiah 23: 11-14) instead of His faithful shepherd.

“Thou dost not take up the name of Jehovah thy God for a vain thing, for Jehovah acquitteth not him who taketh up His name for a vain thing.”    – Exodus 20:7, Young’s Literal Translation

99% truth, 1% heresy results in all heresy, in its eternal effect.

To close out the gender / unisex application issues with Deuteronomy 24, let’s go ahead and apply it to the immorally-abandoned activist who gave up on his own wife after a brief time, and “married” another man’s abandoned wife, justifying it by the same passage:

CONDITION 1:
“When a man hath taken a wife, and married her,

CONDITION 2:
and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement*, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.“

(* Houston pastor, Timothy Sparks has written a paper disputing the translation accuracy of the purported commandment, “let him write” in several translations, showing instead that the manuscript reflects more accurately as “and he writes” – a simple condition or observation by Moses only.)

Nevertheless, “standerinfamilycourt’s” understanding of the facts is that this gentleman did NONE of these things.  His one-flesh covenant wife, in fact, did all of them.  Hence, the next set of “ifs” in this narrow regulation does not apply.    He cannot, therefore, use Deuteronomy 24 to justify remaining in a “marriage” to another living man’s estranged wife which Jesus repeatedly called adulterous.     In fact, neither could he have used Deuteronomy 24 to justify entering the “remarriage” in the first place, because this conditional Mosaic regulation clearly does not discuss “remarriage” by the innocent male party.    What Jesus actually said in Matthew 19:6 and 12 is objectively more relevant to this man’s situation, where he was legally but immorally abandoned, than anything Moses said beyond Genesis 2:21-24.

So, under these circumstances, assuming a Mosaic regulation can be extrapolated to non-Hebrew disciples in 21st century U.S.A., is our activist prohibited from reconciling with his repenting, wayward covenant wife?    David didn’t think so when he recovered the wife of his youth,  Michal from Paltiel, to whom she was subsequently given, after David did not put her out of his house – no “defilement” there.   Hermes of Philopoulos , the 1st century author of the Shepherd of Hermas also didn’t think so (2nd book, Fourth Commandment on Putting One’s Wife Away For Adultery), even when the innocent husband “put away” the guilty wife.    The previous blog went into detail about how Christ’s delivery of the sermon on the mount abrogated and cancelled those various and sundry Mosaic regulations, to leave us with only the 10 Commandments, condensed down into just two.    But there’s a more obvious set of questions to ask when applying Deuteronomy 24 today:

“What ‘land’ was being defiled if a put-away wife was reconciled to her original husband after taking another husband?”

“What did the ‘defilement’ specifically consist of, and why was it considered ‘defilement’ in the first place?”

Scripture is quite specific about which land is within the scope of this narrow Mosaic regulation:   “thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”

Was the land of the United States of America, or the United Kingdom, or Canada, or Australia or Slovenia given to its citizens or their forebears by God, as an inheritance?     No!   There may have been God’s assistance in settling or conquering it,  and there may have further been an Israel-related purpose, in turn, for that, but nobody could argue that there was anything like the Abrahamic Covenant involved!     No, this instruction was specific to Israel!

So how about what the “defilement” was?    That actually circles back to why Deuteronomy 24 applied specifically to the genders as specified, and all of that points back to fulfillment of the prophecies and geneology around Jesus’ birth.     Of course, a man could not be involuntarily put out of his family or his house under the Hebrew legal system.    Women were routinely put out, though Jesus unequivocally declares that from the beginning this was never lawful in the kingdom of God.    Women only had two professions available for their survival, if they had no grown sons to support them:  wife or prostitute.    The law of stoning made the bill of divorcement a survival necessity, as evidence she wasn’t committing adultery in the legal sense, even if she was still committing adultery in both professions in the moral sense.    Her parents typically didn’t live that long, and even if they did, returning to their house would have involved return of the bride price that was paid.    If she became another man’s wife then returned to her original husband, there was potential for the tribal blood lines to get crossed as children were born.   None of this necessarily means that the one-flesh entity created at her first wedding was actually severed, nor does it mean that God created a new one-flesh entity with the second husband, who for that matter, could have been a concurrent polygamist under the culture of the times.

This would have impacted Christ’s blood lines, potentially.     There were longstanding prophecies about that, which further necessitated this Mosaic concession to the pre-Christ depravity of men that their rabbinic tradition wrongly allowed and facilitated (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).     Christ then arrived on the scene incarnate,  the risk of “defilement” ended thereby, and the Mosaic Covenant was officially replaced with the Messianic Covenant (as also laid down in prophecy).    It was now okay for Him to abrogate this Mosaic regulation along with all of the others, to clear the way for the higher moral standards of the Messianic Covenant which would now apply to both Jews and Gentiles.    As He said in Matthew 5:17,  He was thereby fulfilling the law, not prematurely setting it aside, nor “overriding Moses”,  as many of the remarriage apologists love to incorrectly argue.

So, is this pastor’s practice of officiating the weddings of divorced people whose spouses are still living, just because they’ve “married” others already, ever defensible biblically?  Is it ever not misusing the Lord’s name to perform a vain act?   Again, the answer must be:   no!     The nested “if’s” cannot be applied to the benefit of our activist’s guilty covenant wife, nor can they be applied to his #2, the innocent wife who was involuntarily put away, to prevent her from reconciling with the repenting husband or her youth….

The claim that adulterous intervening “remarriage” precludes and overrides the commandment to forgive and reconcile fails on all counts.   

Pastors who sincerely want to bring about a church culture of reformation and repentance must unlearn their politically safe and “aesthetically-pleasing” concept of “permanence” (which they also seek to apply to legalized unions that Jesus clearly, repeatedly and consistently called ongoing adultery while making no exceptions)…and learn the morally-stricter concept of indissolubility which Christ actually taught in that sermon on the mount.   It will be exceedingly messy, and look horrible as the repentance process is taking place (so did the God-commanded sending away of almost 150 unlawful wives of priests with their children, in Ezra’s time), but it is only at this point that the Bridegroom will stop being openly mocked by His bride, the church.  It is only at this point that His bride will cease being deceived, and at the same time, persecuted for standing up (without personal moral authority to do so) for “biblical morals” in others outside the church.   It is only at this point that God’s protective hand will return, and the days of His escalating chastisement will be at an end.   Perhaps it will be at this point, if it comes soon enough, that God’s hand will suddenly peel back and overthrow the immoral civil laws that have heavily yoked us for 50 years in the United States.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.   So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth…..He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.    – Revelation 3:15, 22

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Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Purgatory: Yea or Nay?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“Because Christ also suffered on account of sins once for all, the righteous on behalf of the unrighteous that He might bring us to God; having been put to death, to be sure, in flesh but having been made alive in spirit; in which he also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who formerly were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, while the Ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls were brought safely through the water.   This is an antitype of baptism that now saves us also…”

1 Peter 3:18-21 (per Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken” – 2013)

Among the strongest allies of the covenant marriage “stander” community, especially in our efforts to change both immoral laws and Christian culture is the Christ-following Roman Catholic community, with its outspoken journalists, authors and ministry leaders who have a national following.   One such ally is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of The Ruth Institute.    Dr. Morse recently observed (and we would tend to agree), that the common ground found by Catholic and Protestant members of the movement to expose and roll back the Sexual Revolution, as well as restore the institution of holy matrimony back to God’s definition, often causes us to have more in common with each other than with the churches we hail from.

There are some “agree to disagree” doctrinal differences that do crop up regularly, however.    The validity of Roman Catholic “annulment” tribunals is one constant example.    Recently, Dr. Morse triggered a bit of new debate when she made a video urging the Catholic supporters of The Ruth Institute to pray for the dead.   If there was an occasion or triggering event that sparked this concern that prayers be offered for the dead, Dr. Morse only mentioned it in the second video (but, in fact there was – keep reading).    Wisely, Dr. Morse first made a video addressing the non-Catholic supporters and explaining the basis for doctrine concerning “purgatory”,  anticipating that some Ruth fans who are not Catholic might think she “flipped out” (as she put it) when we saw the video post on Facebook urging “Ruth’s” Catholic friends to do so.   She graciously asked that comments from those who take biblical exception to this practice and doctrine limit their remarks to the explanatory post which she also posted to Ruth’s Facebook page.   Fair enough.

“standerinfamilycourt” addressed this comment to Dr. Morse (no response so far):

“Dr. Morse, I’d say most evangelicals have been taught in their churches about the concept of purgatory, mainly due to the exodus of so many Catholics during the ’70’s, ’80’s and ’90’s into our churches. I don’t mean so much to argue but to pose a couple of questions, if that’s OK. I will honor your request to do it here and not on the other post.

First, it’s pretty widespread evangelical knowledge that the main scriptural authority seems to be the book of 2 Maccabbees, chapter 12 in the Apocrypha, a passage that reads as follows in the DRA version, and would have been written by a pre-Christ author:

“…39 And the day following Judas came with his company, to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen, in the sepulchres of their fathers.

40 And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews: so that all plainly saw, that for this cause they were slain.

41 Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden.

42 And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain.

43 And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection,

44 (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)

45 And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them.

46 It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins….”

“Is there any NT scripture you’re aware of that supports this?

“I ask for a pointed reason, actually. I have found that one of the best ways in the evangelical church to come against popular scripture abuse that seems to justify the abominably unscriptural practice of “remarriage” after man’s “divorce” is for “standers” to volunteer to teach a neutral class in the church on bible text history and handling, along with a technique called hermeneutics –principled interpretation of scripture through a neutral, disciplined process. (It’s along the lines of “catch me a fish and I eat today, but teach me to fish and I eat from now on.”)   It’s not nearly as controversial as telling an ordained pastor straight-on that he is relying on a mistranslation of the Greek for a particularly crucial key word in a verse (very common), or that a bible committee in the 1880’s didn’t choose the soundest manuscript family to translate, or deliberately chose to leave off a phrase they didn’t like. This also gives an opportunity to unoffensively talk about to what extent OT scriptures can be relied upon today. After all, we probably don’t go to hell today for wearing mixed textiles or eating shellfish or failing to stone our children for disobedience.

“Done well, a good number of people come to a correct understanding of scripture concerning sexual ethics on their own, and in the process develop the courage of conviction to stand up against false teaching from the local pulpit or in media ministries (especially when and if they come under conviction to leave their adulterous remarriage and return to their God-joined spouse — an act requiring much intestinal fortitude against persecution in most evangelical churches). Ditto for coming to a supportable, correctly-balanced understanding of grace and eternal security. OSAS (once saved, always saved) is a horrendous heresy that seems to be sending millions to hell in willful, rebellious sin.

“standerinfamilycourt” writes all blogs taking issue with misuse of sexual ethics scriptures in this format – thoroughly demonstrating how each of the 5 basic principles: Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation apply to that scripture – so that others learn this discipline. (In a church class, to keep the learning neutral, I’d simply ask everyone to bring to class a scripture that seems to contradict other scriptures, and has been bothering them.)

“So far, I’m unaware of such a NT scripture supporting the doctrine of purgatory, but there’s always much to learn.”

Actually, there is a New Testament scripture that some theorize as supporting the concept of purgatory that’s worth drilling into with the same tried-and-true principles of hermeneutics, and it’s the
1 Peter 3 scripture in the opening of this post.   SIFC believes it is more respectful of our many Catholic readers to take this step before tossing out several other scriptures that come to mind to contradict the purgatory concept.   Other Protestant commenters on the Ruth facebook post did so that day, and SIFC suggested a few as a follow-up.    We won’t get into a debate here about whether or not the Apocrypha should have been canonized.   It is an historical fact that it was not canonized.   Presumably, the forebears of today’s Catholic church leaders had an adequate say in the decisions of that 3rd century council who decided.     There is evidence that some books in the Apocrypha were regarded by the Apostles and next generation church fathers as Holy Spirit-inspired, notably, The Shepherd of Hermas.    However, the Maccabees books are primarily an historical account of how a colony of unregenerated Jews conducted combat, and reflects the thoughts of unregenerated souls.    Which is why SIFC asked Dr. Morse for corroborating NT scripture.

A few days later, “standerinfamilycourt”,  having not yet listened to the second video, caught up with the sad news that the husband of Moira Greyland Peat had suddenly had a fatal heart attack on Memorial Day.    Moira was one of the riveting speakers at the Ruth Institute Survivors Summit one month earlier.   She and her husband were also Catholic.    Apparently, for whatever reason, there may have been doubts that Mr. Peat was sufficiently following Christ to arrive in the kingdom of God without additional prayers for his soul.   All of this was evidently on Dr. Morse’s mind and heart when she made the two videos on May 30.

On June 7, another Catholic husband passed into eternity, this time, the estranged prodigal of a (formerly Catholic) stander  – one who experienced the double heartbreak of having the church “annul” her parents’ marriage after many years, and then hers, in both cases to accommodate the legitimization of an adulterous relationship within that church.    This prodigal had been on his way home in recent weeks preceding this, in a “false start”, torn between his true wife and the faux replacement who was now chasing other men, and had left him.    He never made it all the way home due to a fatal drug overdose.     This bereaved stander now has to suffer the worst agony of any Christian, knowing that their prodigal spouse died in his or her unrepentant sin (possibly even taking his own life), and also knowing that the Apostle was clear when he said, “Do not be deceived.   No adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God.”    While it might once have seemed comforting to his covenant widow to hold out a hope that she can pray her deceased husband into the kingdom, she is a woman of the word of God, and knows quite firmly the only option given by scripture is to walk him in on this side of heaven.    The promising chance to do that was suddenly taken from her after many years waiting on the Lord for it.    Saddest of all, there’s some chance that satan used this unbiblical doctrine to deceive him into possibly accelerating his own death rather than persevering through the moral pain he was experiencing.

Oh, dear readers who have prodigals running from the Lord anywhere in your families:  satan wishes to sift them like wheat and won’t let their darkened, deceived hearts turn back to the light easily.    He will often get them to turn their own rage and shame on themselves when their house built on the sand starts crumbling, as it inevitably will.    This requires spiritual warfare of the highest order to thwart, usually long distance under no-contact conditions, and often before there is the remotest sign the prodigal was thinking of their true home once in a while.  This requires a spirit-filled Christ-follower praying a wall of fire around the very life and mind of their wayward prodigal, binding the spirit of suicide and binding the enemy of their prodigal’s soul, in the name of Jesus Christ.    SIFC has attended only one Catholic funeral and cannot recall whether purgatory was mentioned in that mass many years ago.    If it is mentioned at this one, it will be painful for this former Catholic who has lost enough already to the ravages of extrabiblical theology.

Is it at all possible that a “holding zone” was a pre-Christ provision to allow OT souls an opportunity to surrender to Christ?

There are many practices in the Judaism of the Old Testament that Christ’s arrival and ministry abrogated and did away with.    The natural reason is that He was born to become the Way, the Truth and the Life…the more excellent way.   Pre-Christ Jews earned their way into heaven by observing the Torah and especially by making the burnt offering sacrifices on a daily basis as atonement for their sins.    Those sacrifices were done away with by historical events shortly after Christ’s death and resurrection.    He was now the sacrifice already poured out, and no man comes to the Father except through Him.    That entails faith in His death as our atonement, wiping the slate clean up to that point, and thereafter walking with a heart of obedience to His commandments and repentance when we fail.  It seems clear that Christ did not ever intend to leave us with an “Option B”, much less an “Option B” that others could effect for us.   In Christ, we don’t have to be perfect in our life choices, but we do have to behave like a people grateful for His atoning death which justifies us.   We have to seek lifelong sanctification, and actively repent when we wander astray.    Ultimate salvation is a process, with accepting our justification as the starting point, and our admission to the marriage supper of the Lamb its consummation point, another fact that casts the idea of a purgatory into considerable doubt, scripturally.   Either we were moving toward that banquet with our heart and feet, or we were moving in the opposite direction at the point of our physical death.

The scripture in 1 Peter 3 points to Christ’s concern for a people who perished in the great flood before either the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenants were made by God.   Their souls were being held somewhere because they did indeed form a congregation of souls whom Peter tells us Christ was able to address before ascending into heaven. The context seems fairly clear that these were the only souls for whom there was not a system of sin atonement provided, because their lives and deaths pre-dated those things.   There was no question that their lives were sinful, for they all perished in the flood who were still alive at the time Noah sealed up the door of the ark, and the book of Genesis states that God regretted having made mankind because they were so evil.   The reliable translation quoted above states that Jesus made a “proclamation” to these pre-flood souls who had perished, while several other popular contemporary English versions say that He “preached” to them (perhaps even imagining an “altar call”).   It’s hard to say what the proclamation was, or whether it was a redemptive proclamation at all, since scripture doesn’t say.    We do know that none of the Apostles nor the early church fathers ever urged Christ-followers to pray for the dead, or otherwise held out hope for salvation after one becomes worm food without having lived in Christ.

The words of the Apostle, Paul:

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.  For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.   For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.  Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
– 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
– Romans 8:1

If the dead in Christ will rise when the Bridegroom returns for His church, what will happen to the dead who weren’t in Christ?   What about those (fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, the covetous,  drunkards, revilers, swindlers who did not repent in this life)  we’re told by Paul will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
–  Galatians 5:19-21

The following is what the book of Revelation has to say about what happens to the dead who are not risen with Christ, raptured alive and admitted to the marriage supper of the Lamb:  

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.   And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;  and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.

Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.   The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection.   Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.  And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.   And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.  And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
– Revelation, chapter 20

When the dead are prayed for in the Roman Catholic Church, is the request for Jesus to write their names in the Lamb’s book, just in case they are in “purgatory”?     There’s at least some scriptural evidence that everyone’s name is written in the book of life when they are born, and removed if they do not die in Christ:

“He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”   – Revelation 3:5

“standerinfamilycourt” also recommends a close read of 1 Corinthians 15, from verse 12 through to the end of the chapter for further deep insight into these things.   There is one more worthwhile point-out to highlight in this passage, however.  It’s Paul’s discussion of being “baptized for the dead” (verse 29):

“Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead?  If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?”    

This sounds an awful lot like praying for the dead, does it not?   This appears to be something (in context) that only a few Corinthians were actually practicing.     Paul appears to have neither condoned nor condemned it, but used it to make a point of irony in addressing the larger Corinthian heresy afoot:  the belief that the dead are not raised at all.   Dr. Pickering (mentioned above) theorizes this passage to the contrary, in his bible commentary as follows:

“to be ‘dead’, they were once alive, and will be judged on the basis of what they did while they were alive;  once dead their account is closed.   So here Paul is presumably referring to those who are replacing the dead in the ranks of believers by being baptized.   If there is no resurrection, what is the point of doing so, especially if all you’re going to get is persecution?”
(page 376, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken”)

The practice is mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament, nor in early church writings.    The supreme irony of that Corinthian practice is what baptism actually represents:  it is a symbolic burial, marking the death of the old, unregenerated self and the emergence of the regenerated new person in Christ, to Dr. Pickering’s point.    Faith traditions that sprinkle rather than immerse may lose the significance of this, but the Corinthians most likely were immersers, after the still-fresh tradition of Jesus and John the Baptizer originating in the Jordan River.    This Corinthian superstition created a proxy burial for the “benefit” of those already interred.    One good theory is that this was being done for known believers who, for one reason or another, did not get baptized while alive.    It doesn’t appear that Paul was very upset with the practice, because he was never shy about calling out and rebuking true spiritual hazards.   It seems certain that if they were doing it in order to posthumously “save” the unregenerated, or the believing backsliders, Paul certainly would have called it out, as part of his consistent “do not be deceived” messaging.

Good faith, sincere Christians remain divided today about whether baptism is necessary for justification.  “standerinfamilycourt” falls somewhere in the middle on this.    Those who put their trust in Christ but didn’t get baptized for whatever still-obedient reason before dying are justified in Him, because this (by itself) is not enough to remove their name from the Lamb’s book of life.    However,  obedience is necessary to remain on the larger sanctification path that eventually arrives at the marriage supper, and since we are commanded to be baptized, willful refusal to be baptized creates additional obedience problems, and hinders ministry.   SIFC was sprinkled as an infant, and for many years thought that plus my later conversion sufficed, until the Holy Spirit convicted me at age 52 or so to be immersed as an adult disciple, decades after surrendering my life to Christ.    The Apostles never commanded parents to baptize their babies.    They commanded those old enough to surrender their lives to Christ to repent and be baptized.

Who’s in the first resurrection, of those dead who don’t rise with the Rapture, then?    Could some of the prayed-for dead be in this group, instead of in the universally-condemned second resurrection?    Most likely, this first group will be those who die during the millennial reign of Christ, whose names are found in the aforesaid book.

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,  so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.    –  Hebrews 9:27

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Top 10 Ways Fathers Would Be Helped If “No-Fault” Divorce Laws Were Reformed

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, and that you may live long on the earth.   – Ephesians 6:2-3

A few weeks ago, SIFC wrote about the potential impact of badly-needed divorce reform on the nation’s mothers.   In many ways, that was a hard piece to write, because women consistently file over two-thirds of the unilateral “no-fault” petitions that shred their own families, year in and year out.   They always have a heart-tugging excuse, usually involving some degree of what they perceive to be abuse, from which the children “must be shielded at all costs” (including the violent destruction of the family).   When they take up with another man shortly thereafter (as though that behavior wasn’t even more abusive of the children), it’s only “coincidental” and “he’s who God really had for me”.

Writing that piece felt a bit like saying, “Outlawing your unilateral rebellion against God (and your husband), will benefit you by saving you from God’s wrath.”  In many cases, that’s the actual truth.    On the other hand, when speaking of fathers who give “family courts” permission to shred their own families, such men would be a much smaller proportion of the petitions that have historically been filed.  This law has always been a militant feminist contrivance, and a vehicle for social Marxism, rather than for freedom and human thriving (which, incidentally, God specifically set men in charge of, not women).

Dr. Stephen Baskerville stated quite profoundly that the ultimate goal of the Leftist “social engineers” is to sever fathers from their families.   In fact, according to Dr. Baskerville (@ 7:23-8:33), the only legitimate reason for government to presume to regulate God’s holy ordinance is to preserve its original purpose – to firmly glue fathers to their families for life.

We explained in that earlier piece what a desirable reform in the law would look like, and we repeat it here:

From a constitutional standpoint, allowing for the restoration of our right of religious conscience and free religious exercise under the 1st Amendment, and allowing for 14th Amendment due process and equal protection with regard to parental and property rights, our suggested reforms are:

(1) All petitions that are not mutual filings would require evidence-based proof of serious, objective harm to the marriage or to the offended spouse.     For example, “emotional abuse” would be professionally defined in the statutes in terms of specific behaviors, with professionally documented admissible evidence legally defined

(2) All divisions of property and child custody / welfare arrangements that are not agreed as part of a mutual petition would be determined based on objective evidence of marital fault being the key consideration, with a view to leaving the non-offending party and the children as whole as possible in comparison with pre-divorce conditions.

In many ways, the benefits to fathers from these reforms, are made obvious just by looking at what “family courts” routinely do to fathers, and imagining those things being undone.   Totalitarian family policies are never good for anyone, but on average, fathers as a group have been hit with the most severe overall human suffering resulting from them.

Benefit #10 –  Men would no longer need for fear that marriage will wreck their life and literally criminalize what used to be universally-expected fatherly and husbandly behavior in civilized societies.
We all owe our first loyalties to the eternal kingdom of God, and not to the civil laws of men when they directly conflict with God’s law.   St. Augustine expressed this in his writings, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also evoked this 5th century thought in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, when he wrote:

“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’  The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’

“Now, what is the difference between the two?  How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law… “

State policies designed to do anything but encourage national repentance and sustainably raise future citizens...(namely, to instead try to fiscally “manage” the whirlwind consequences of legalized immorality) have degenerated to the point where lawyers deliberately whip up hostility between troubled spouses for their own future profit (which lies not in their reconciliation) , and where states act against taxpayers’ best overall interests in order to secure Federal Title IV-D funds from the men they slanderously label as “deadbeat dads” (although some women have also been finding themselves in this horrific nightmare, as well.)

Benefit #9 –  Dads could serve their country overseas when duty calls, with reasonable assurance there will be a family to come back to, instead of coming back to a perjurous “protective order”.
As unbelievable (and despicable) as it sounds, “family law” attorneys have been known to attend continuing legal education (CLE) classes – such as by this Texas Assistant D.A. – to learn how to abuse the domestic violence protective order system, and to coach their clients on how to gain leverage for their divorce petition settlement (children, property, etc.) through allegations centered around actual or fabricated  post-traumatic-shock syndrome (PTSD).   Tragically, this is routinely used against veterans whose spouse got tired of their deployments in the service of our country and found someone else.   In many states, the wronged spouse has no option to bring a counter petition where adultery (fault) is actually with the petitioning spouse, because that state’s law only provides for “no-fault” grounds, and because it (separately) bars all consideration of marital fault in either child custody or property division orders.   Many states have also repealed or gutted their “alienation of affections” civil cause of action against spouse-poachers in recent years.

Benefit #8 –  Dads would have more authority and influence to prevent  a third party from endangering their children, and would no longer need a court’s permission to do so.
One of the most egregious human rights crimes against families (after the Title IV-D organized crime racket, of course) is banning marital fault as the key consideration in child custody decisions.
We can thank the Sexual Revolution, of course, for outlawing moral judgments on adults in the best interest of the character development of the children.    We can also thank the Sexual Revolution, therefore, for the high level of emotional damage to two generations of children (and counting).

If mom unilaterally divorces dad because he doesn’t make enough money to suit her,  won’t lose his beer gut, or whatever, and plans to shack up with whoever enticed her away, it should be a no-brainer that all other factors being equal, dad should get the kids, and mom should get supervised visits because of her immoral lifestyle.  
That’s the way it used to work, and there was nothing wrong with it.   The kids came first.     Unfortunately, as it stands, dad is even not allowed to tell the court about mom’s contributing adultery in the most evil of the states.   He’s barely allowed to tell the court that the new boyfriend is endangering the children, (and that’s if he’s lucky enough that mom didn’t invent some abuse charges and slap him with a restraining order so that he can’t even gain awareness of what’s going on with his kids.)   No, instead of the authority GOD gave him, he has to go through CPS — who stands to make the state a little money by selling the kids off to strangers called “foster parents”, bypassing dad altogether if he doesn’t happen to have 6-figures in cash to go to court with after he brings forward an abuse or neglect complaint.    When human governments come between a worthy father and his children, God will judge them severely!   In fact, that’s precisely why the analogous slave trade was such an existential threat to the viability of the United States (and other involved countries) to continue as sovereign nations.

Benefit #7 –  Dads would no longer be financing their estranged wife’s illicit subsequent household.
When mom gets custody of the kids in a unilateral forced divorce, dad gets to empty his wallet, regardless of his own fitness as a parent. The court applies a formula to determine how much he pays, and generally it can (and often does) go up, but if his circumstances like health or employment take a hit, there’s no guarantee in a lot of states that the amount will ever go down until the last child is 18. If he doesn’t pay up, the state often can come after any licenses (including professional licenses) that he holds, can publish his name in the paper as a “deadbeat”, and can even jail him for a period of time. If dad holds all or most of the family retirement funds, a “QDRO” (qualified domestic relations order – in a system that bars consideration of marital fault, a.k.a. – “license to steal”) is drawn up to give a good chunk of it to mom (again, without regard to consideration marital fault in a most states),  and if dad was lucky enough to have vested traditional pension benefits, he ludicrously winds up paying mom by the month some day to live in her ongoing immorality.   Responsible Christian husbands sorrowfully dread that this is potentially paying their wife by the month, by court order for life to die in her ongoing immoral state, and thereby have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.   This is the exact opposite of the responsibility God assigned to authentic covenant husbands, and a man might prayerfully consider declining to cooperate with pension QDRO’s and enduring the humanly lawful consequences of civil disobedience, as suggested by St. Augustine and MLK, Jr.

Folks, what the state has actually done here, in banning moral judgments against the petitioner, is facilitate and incentivize spouse-poaching!    (That which is financially rewarded in public policy, you tend to get a lot of, but who wants to live in that kind of a society?)

Benefit #6 –  Dads who save for their children’s education, will have better assurance that this is where the funds will actually go.
For countless corrupt attorneys, obtaining the initial divorce decree tends to function as the “loss leader”,  knowing that the real paycheck for them comes for the next several years following that that “dissolution” when the conflict over the children may continue until the last one reaches age 18.     It is not uncommon for the non-custodial parent to complain that they’ve spent $200,000 or more just to secure the right to see their child enough to carry out their rightful parental role following a forced divorce.   Where does this money come from?  Typically it comes from retirement assets and college savings plans that were supposed to benefit the children.   Instead, the funds must be diverted to attorney fees and court costs. 

Benefit #5- Dad’s wife will no longer be incentivized by “family court”,  nor rewarded for, filing a divorce petition against their innocent husbands.
Texas Family Law Foundation’s chief lobbyist recently testified before the (liberally-skewed) Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee, that requiring mutual consent to access “no-fault” grounds, as HB 922 (2019) and HB93 (2017) would have done, deprives the petitioner of their leverage.  So far so good, since one would have to be brain-dead not to realize allowing the petitioner a little less “leverage” is not quite the evil thing Mr. Bresnan painted it to be.    Where he drifted off into outright falsehood is claiming that non-consensual “no fault” grounds of today’s status-quo in Texas “provides a level playing field”.    We’re frankly not so sure Mr. Bresnan’s nose was finished growing, two weeks later!   Yes, the leverage will shift as a result of requiring mutual consent for “no-fault” grounds.   The U.S. and state constitutions demand that it shift, because what we have now is anything but a level playing field.    But despite the special interest bellowing and subterfuge, it won’t shift nearly enough until “living apart” grounds that accrue in Texas three years later, to the benefit of the abandoner and forced upon the innocent spouse when the latter were neither consulted about the separation nor were they remotely supportive of it.   (There was no 2017 nor 2019 bill addressing back-door “no-fault” grounds via willful abandonment.)

Benefit #4 – Dad’s covenant family will have a much better chance of surviving the apostasy of the family pastor.
Not only is contemporary “family law” a wildly lucrative business model that its beneficiaries feel must be protected at all costs, so is the operation of some local churches – sadly.    Churches don’t tend to become mega-churches by being too choosy who they take money or volunteer efforts from, or how much sin they take onboard right along with the sinner(s).   If that means ignoring or obfuscating God’s word concerning the no-excuses indissolubility of original holy matrimony, or concerning the ongoing adulterous nature of all remarriage while an estranged original spouse is still living, or concerning the clear biblical qualifications for pastors and deacons, so be it!    (After all, we don’t want to be “Pharisees”, do we?)    In fact, most seminaries today teach future pastors an apostate gospel when it comes to divorce and remarriage, and most contemporary English bible translations have been crafted to back that apostate gospel up accordingly.   Indeed, Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox together created an origin point for that false gospel, which was relatively easy to do when the masses were illiterate and bibles were too expensive for most people who could read at the time.    Hence, most pastors today reject what Jesus made clear in the original texts, that humans have no power from God to “dissolve” holy matrimony, and there are no “biblical exceptions” to this.  Such pastors have blinded eyes when it comes to seeing how their performing an adulterous wedding over mom and her new boyfriend (likely, another living woman’s legally-estranged husband) absolutely crushes the souls of the covenant children of the real marriage(s).

Dr. Ryan Anderson, co-author of  “What is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense” (2012) famously said, “the law is a teacher”.   This was not exactly original, he borrowed this observation from St. Paul, but logically extended the application of that scripture from the Apostle’s original thought:

“Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”  – Galatians 3:24-25

Dr. Anderson argues that even an immoral law takes on an air of pseudo-righteousness when it has police power and court decrees behind it, because we are usually raised to respect civil authority…(indeed, some Christians go so far as to apply Romans 13 to blatantly immoral civil laws.)   This legality in the eyes of men gives pastors a lot of “cover” over time to forget souls and give people what their flesh wants, especially if carnal believers are now in the majority and what they want has been temporally legal for a long time.  True disciples who challenge them  based on God’s word can then be pasted as “dividers of the brethren” and treated roughly.    This actually happened to a 15-year old girl from Canada who visited a Missouri apostate church full of divorced and remarried folk, and spoke up while there about one such couple, according to the account of her marriage permanence pastor, Phil Schlamp (see sermon 5, @ 33.50).   Something similar, but much more severe happened to a covenant wife when a megachurch in Florida colluded with her prodigal husband to stage an “incident” on their premises and had her falsely arrested for “battery” a few years ago when she simply quoted scripture in the pastor’s office challenging the church for installing this adulterous man as a deacon and agreeing to his adulterous wedding to a harlotrous woman in that church.    “What about my husband’ soul?” she asked this hireling.   Although Jesus would firmly disagree, he responded:  “There’s no such thing as an adulterous marriage.”   This prodigal husband tragically died of cancer, still in his sinful union and without Christ, a handful of years later.

The closer man’s laws can be brought to reflect God’s laws, the better it is for avoiding corruption in both families and pastors.

Benefit #3 –  Dads will be far less  likely suffer alienation from their children if they themselves lead a morally upright life, rather than having  routine “family court” abuses remain entirely out of their control, as it is now.
Even with the most moral civil laws that can be drawn up, there’s no stopping mom from leaving if that’s what she wants to do.   At best, there’s only economic deterrence from doing so, and moral protection of the children from normalized exposure to her adulterous or sodomous partner.   Under current law, when mom leaves, the kids are going to be exposed to her immoral life choices regardless of who gets custody.    It behooves dads to realize that heavy-handed government was never delegated any authority from God over a man’s children that would exceed his own authority over them.   The best interests of the child is meaningless drivel in a pagan courtroom, with judges driven by illicit Federal subsidies to break up families, and by enforcing coercive sexual autonomy in favor of selfish people.    However, if despite the profoundly immoral environment, dad lives before his children a godly example, and continues to teach them right and wrong from the bible, he is occupying the territory God assigned exclusively to him.   God will “have his back” in it, and will move mountains in his behalf.    Just remember, if you don’t want your son running after another woman should his future wife divorce him, don’t do so yourself.

Benefit #2 – Dads will have a restored legal basis for discharging the higher duty God has charged them with, as the spiritual head of the (biblical, covenant) wife and the covenant children (a basic Bill of Rights protection:  the free exercise of religion).
There is an Old Testament story that is very sad, because it demonstrates how seriously God takes a father’s assignment from Him, and doesn’t take excuses for shirking this responsibility based on the surrounding environment.   We read in 1 Samuel 2 about the priest, Eli who had two grown sons who were also priests in the temple of the Lord, but abused their priesthood by being sexually immoral and misusing the animal sacrifices brought by the people.   The two sons are described as “worthless men who did not know the Lord and the custom of the priests with the people.”   And why was that, if their father was a judge, and a priest of God who lived with them?
Scripture doesn’t elaborate any further, but clearly the implication is that their father had not very faithfully carried out his responsibility to train them.  In fact, the implication in the next chapter is that Eli did a better job of training Samuel, who was sent to the temple as a boy to serve there.   Scripture tells as that Eli sharply rebuked his sons as adults, but by then it was too late to change either their behavior or their ultimate fate in posterity.    Another man of God came to Eli with God’s pronouncement of judgment on the house of Eli:   “Why do you kick at My sacrifice and at My offering which I have commanded in My dwelling, and honor your sons above Me, by making yourselves fat with the choicest of every offering of My people Israel?’  Therefore the Lord God of Israel declares, ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father should walk before Me forever’; but now the Lord declares, ‘Far be it from Me—for those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me will be lightly esteemed.   Behold, the days are coming when I will break your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your house…all the increase of your house will die in the prime of life….This will be the sign to you which will come concerning your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: on the same day both of them will die.” 
The story picks again up in chapter 4  when the adult Samuel is now in charge (rather than either son), Eli is now 98 years old, and Israel is in the process of being defeated in battle by the Philistines.   Both “priestly” sons died in battle after the Ark of the Covenant was misused then captured by the enemy.    A man came to inform old Eli…“When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and  his neck was broken and he died, for he was old and heavy….”    The Lord held Eli responsible for failing to teach his sons properly as boys, and wasn’t taking any excuses.  Today, under the Messianic covenant, every household is a mini-church and every father of that home a priest.   Today the cutting off of manhood is taking a very different form, but the overall effect is the same.    Blessed is the man who asks the Lord to do battle for him to make a way through and around our immoral family laws, so that he can carry out this priestly and fatherly duty, despite the outward circumstances.

Benefit #1 – Dads will have a reduced risk of falling into the sin of remarriage adultery and forfeiting their own soul by dying in that immoral state.
For those who don’t follow our blog on a regular basis, we make no apologies for regularly talking about heaven and hell here.   It’s truly regrettable that we have to do so, because God really gave that job to His shepherds, most of whom have not only rejected the responsibility, but also rejected an enormous body of biblical truth-telling in order to appease the Sexual Revolution and keep warm buns with full wallets in their pews.    We make no apologies for not leaving God out of the “no-fault” reform debate, nor out of the more general “culture wars”.   We don’t think, due to the demonic nature of this fight, that the war can possibly be won any other way.    You won’t hear much about “natural law” around here.   Instead, you’ll hear about God’s law!

It became culturally uncouth to speak of hell sometime back in the 1960’s, especially in churches, as if eternal moral consequences for persisting in wicked life choices were suddenly declared passe’ from On-High.    The Apostles clearly did not hold this attitude, nor did most of the 1st through 4th century church fathers, even when speaking of the born-again.

Circa 100 A.D., the Bishop of Antioch said this in his Epistle to the Ephesians,

“Do not err, my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And if those that corrupt mere human families are condemned to death, how much more shall those suffer everlasting punishment who endeavor to corrupt the Church of Christ, for which the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, endured the cross, and submitted to death!  Whosoever, ‘being waxen fat,’ and ‘become gross,’ sets at nought His doctrine, shall go into Hell. In like manner, every one that has received from God the power of distinguishing, and yet follows an unskillful shepherd, and receives a false opinion for the truth, shall be punished.”  –St. Ignatius

No, this wicked idea that “remarriage” while an original spouse is still alive could ever be accepted by God as holy matrimony was an unfortunate time-bomb, a product of 16th century Reformation humanism (as was “replacement theology”, against which the Apostle Paul also warned).    Eventually, this heresy removed inhibitions against enacting immoral family and reproductive laws in western nations, and deceived the lawmakers who today uphold these laws into having the audacity to call themselves “Christians”.   This was also the reason why some conservative denominations made the eternally fatal choice in the 1970’s to revise their once-biblical doctrine to accommodate the enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, instead of standing strong against them anywhere close to the way they stood against gay “marriage”.

Jesus preached a 3-part definition of adultery, and part 3 actually precludes any notion of “biblical exceptions” we hear so much about:

(1) to lust in one’s heart after someone other than our living spouse (Matt. 5:27-28)
(2) to divorce a spouse in order to remarry (Mark 10:11-12)
(3) to marry any divorced person (and by corollary, to marry someone after being involuntarily divorced – Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b)

In Matthew 5:27-32 Jesus tell us that adultery doesn’t just occur extramaritally, but it occurs just as much inside of the “remarriages” of seemingly respectable church-going people, and by His reference to cutting off of our hands and gouging out our eyes rather than taking the first step toward this abomination, He alludes to this conduct leading to hell as the (unrepentant) destination.   Later on, He directly and graphically says so in Luke 16:18-31.

While it’s not strictly necessary for pastors and lawmakers to visualize their sheep (and constituents) in the hell-flames to get the former onboard with moral divorce reforms in civil law, it sure doesn’t hurt. Pastors who do see this connection usually don’t perform the kinds of weddings that directly drive the demand for “no-fault” divorces. If lawmakers could see their adulterously remarried constituents in the resulting hell-flames as a repeal bill is before them, and if they knew that what the martyred Ignatius had to say was a certainty concerning the corrupters of families, it wouldn’t matter whether they were liberal or conservative, they would vote for the repeal of marriage “dissolution” laws altogether. Getting the state “out of the marriage business” would include getting the state out of the divorce business to the same extent!

Nine of these benefits to fathers (and future fathers) are temporal but extend to the 1000th generation, according to God’s word. The #1 benefit to fathers of biblically-moral family laws, however, is eternal.

Happy Father’s Day to those who can celebrate today with their children.  Joyous Fathers Day to those whose messy circumstances lead them to find extra comfort in the Lord, and greater dependence upon Him.

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,
And the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
– Proverbs 13:22

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

The “Equality Act” Is Unconstitutional For All The Same Reasons “No-Fault” Divorce Is: So Why Is Nobody SHOUTING The “U”-Word?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
– Matthew 5:11-12

From the start of the first century church, intense persecution has always proven to be a powerful purifier of the true church, and an accelerator of the kingdom of God.     That’s the good news.    The rest of this post will be about the bad news that lies ahead as a direct consequence of those who should have, failing to stand up for the religious freedom of embattled innocent spouses when their 1st and 14th Amendment protections began to be trounced 50 years ago in the “family courts” across the land.

Since all persons in the jurisdiction of the United States of America are (theoretically) entitled to the God-given inalienable rights to free religious exercise and right-of-conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to seek redress of grievances by the state, life, liberty and property, equal protection under the law, due process under the law, both procedural and substantive, there is no way of lawfully enacting a Federal statute that curtails these founding liberties but only if they interfere with the sexual autonomy of homosexuals, abortion-seekers and the like.    Doing so unavoidably creates a super-class of citizens with superior rights to everyone else.   Unless it’s done by the constitutional process for constitutional amendment, it is decidedly unconstitutional.   It is only being attempted because our national leadership is smugly satisfied that the rule of law derived from built-in separation-of-powers has been rendered sufficiently inoperable to overturning it.   Today, as a result, we have a great many enacted unconstitutional laws wreaking tyranny over the lives of the politically-disfavored, due to the decades-old disconnection of the separation-of-powers mechanism through collusion among power-holders, in favor of special interests.    In fact, the enactment in the 1970’s of unilateral divorce laws was probably the most impactful of these.

Moreover, “family court” provided the perfect incubator to prove that totalitarianism could go effectively unchallenged, regardless of the human rights violations regularly honed in “family courts” across the nation.    Who knew that despite even more strongly-worded protections in many state constitutions, the family law lobby and the feminist groups could cause both courts and legislatures in 49 of the 50 states to march in lockstep for five decades?     This also proved without any doubt that a state or Federal Constitution could contain all sorts of vestigial protective language that the judiciary could decide ideologically (and unilaterally) whether or not it would ever be enforced, depending on the clout of the political class involved and varying with the prevailing, changeable social morality.

Up to now, this erosion in constitutional protections in the name of the Sexual Revolution primarily impacted about a million or so “Respondents” to unilateral forced divorce petitions each year in the U.S.    Following enactment of the so-called “Equality Act”, all non-homosexual citizens, and especially practicing Christians, will join these divorce “Respondents” in being stripped of their fundamental rights if they in any way interfere with someone’s sexual autonomy.    Back when the sexual autonomy involved was primarily (but not exclusively) heterosexual, the majority didn’t mind this, and didn’t see it as the threat to our constitutional republic that it actually represents.    No Christian legal defense ministry would touch divorce challenges…by policy (and would routinely deny there was a religious free exercise threat involved in them).    Neither would most other types of large ministries or state family policy councils that purportedly stood against all challenges to religious freedom and the biblical family in their mission statements.   A small few FPC’s would occasionally undertake very quiet activities on this front, but not enough to be effective in the time frame before the present threat emerged, and certainly none that entailed significant resources or any publicity.

Just recently, Texas Values (an arm of the marriage-permanence-lukewarm Dobson political organization) plastered the blogosphere with “Save Chick-fil-A” (from franchise exclusion at Texas airports), but published not a word about HB922, a bill that would have repealed non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce.  This FPC sent a very inexperienced and poorly-prepared junior analyst solo to the May 1 committee hearing for that important bill, while the family law lobby sent its most senior person.    In 2017,  Texas Values’ director testified very effectively, but committed no media support that year or 2019.     The semi-annual Texas legislative session has now adjourned.  Chick-fil-A was saved.  Texas families weren’t so fortunate this time.

Now that this is being done for the special benefit of transgender homosexuals, instead of just for the special benefit of heterosexual adulterers and abandoners, the majority of society still might not mind, so long as the only losers are Christ-followers.     But there’s strong evidence that this time, the tyrannical impact is going to be much, much broader, impacting female athletes, racial minorities, women in the workplace and more.    Arguably, it could lead to civil war, and probably should lead to civil war if enacted.   Otherwise, the 240-year American experiment has died an ugly death by sexual appetites and the emotional disorders they spin off.    It probably goes without saying that if the (In)Equality Act is enacted and signed into law, the unilateral divorce reform movement will face substantially longer odds of ever succeeding, before the nation folds into a grotesque version of Orwell’s  “Animal Farm”.

“…all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others…”

Other than religious freedom complaints, why aren’t others declaring the “Equality Act”  unconstitutional before it passes?   Enacted legislation, despite its obvious unconstitutionality, is exceptionally hard to reverse, as the unilateral, forced divorce quagmire has unquestionably demonstrated.

If U.S. citizens ever started to demonstrate that they can and do read the Constitution for themselves when bills are in progress, perhaps fewer unconstitutional laws would be cynically passed by rogue legislatures.   Just maybe the oath of office mouthed by the people we’ve elected to various offices, to …“protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America (and the individual states) from all enemies domestic and foreign” might start to mean something again.   Sadly, however we are becoming a society virtually illiterate in such things, and one which is increasingly willing to elect representatives to high office who are equally illiterate in them.

Judicial Watch is a very effective organization that has also been all over exposure of this malicious legislation, with attorneys who argue before the Supreme Court.    “standerinfamilycourt” left this comment with regard to their May 24 post:

This proposed law is unconstitutional for all the same multiple reasons that the unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws of 49 out of the 50 states are unconstitutional, and that’s far from a coincidence! The Left has been methodically honing their skills removing the fundamental rights of parents and Christ-followers in the “family courts” of the land for 50 years, come September.

What they’ve learned over this long trial is that our own hypocrisy and fondness for sexual autonomy has shut everyone up who would otherwise defend embattled parents and innocent spouses. They’ve also learned that powerful special interest groups can make our appeals courts inaccessible to ordinary citizens who have no access to Christian legal defense ministries nor to so much as the media resources of state family policy councils for the purpose of sustaining a complaint of unconstitutionality, even if a law is blatantly so on numerous counts.

Knowing how hard it’s become to get even the most blatant unconstitutional law related to the Sexual Revolution overturned in court, can’t the constitutional attorneys in this battle (at the very least) start calling a spade a spade, and use the “U”-word instead of merely complaining about the law’s too-obvious intent? Couldn’t they encourage everyone else to? After all, every member of Congress casting a vote, as well as our POTUS have taken an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, domestic and foreign. That means that nearly 200 Congressfolk (so far) have violated their oath of office – and that ought to be a BIG DEAL to all of us! Our POTUS recently stopped short of committing to veto the “Equality” Act. In other words, Trump’s still considering whether he must keep his oath of office.

Just some thoughts,

“standerinfamilycourt”

 

We can count on President Trump never to sign such a bill, right?   We all better hope so!   “standerinfamilycourt” would like to suggest, however, that we not take such an assumption for granted.    Nor should we take for granted that any reprieve afforded in 2019 by a presidential veto will necessarily be permanent, even if Trump is re-elected.  Trump did take a positive step last week to curb the religious freedom fangs of homosexualism, just as the “Equality Act” was sailing through the House of Representatives on its way to the Senate.    Yet, reprieve-wise, we remain an unrepentant nation under God’s advanced judgment, where church leadership has not moved an inch on reversing the desecration of His full definition of holy matrimony, and where escalating chastisement appears to still be necessary from His hand if there is to be any national repentance that will redeem our constitutional republic.

Two unrepentant years have elapsed since the election of Donald Trump, while the disappointments described above have continued in the Christian community throughout that particular reprieve.    
Not one single pastor with a congregation in all of Texas was among the witnesses May 1 in Austin supporting HB922 (or its companion HB926 which would have extended the waiting period for “no-fault” divorce to six months).     Yet, the next week, a Dallas pastor performed a mass wedding for cohabiting couples in his church willing to go through 90 days of premarital counseling, many of whom likely were already married in God’s eyes to someone else.

At the end of May, Trump came out with a tweet pledging to use foreign policy to pressure other countries to “decriminalize” homosexuality.   Fine, if that means refraining from executing people for their same-sex attraction.    But the reality is that both sodomy and adultery ought to be restored to their well-founded illegality in this country, based on the fraudulent judicial manufacture of the so-called “right to privacy” for which the Constitution has not been duly-amended by its citizens to ratify this piece of 1970’s legislation-from-the-bench.  Same-sex attraction, for that matter, needs to be reclassified as an emotional disorder, reversing the heinous political action that occurred in 1973 to remove it from the diagnostic manuals of mental health professionals.

Why should we be shouting the “U-word” preemptively here, and holding our elected representatives responsible for doing so as well?  Because every elected Federal official in the process has sworn an oath of office to “defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.”    If we defer to the ideological black-robes, as if they were the only ones qualified to detect violations of fundamental rights such as these being enshrined in the Federal statute, we lose the opportunity to hold our elected policymakers responsible for carrying out their oath of office to defend our Constitution from its domestic enemies.    Enactment will prove way too late to do that!   Go tell your Senator and this POTUS that you expect them to honor their sacred oath to uphold the Constitution and vote against / veto the so-called “Equality Act”!

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.  – Proverbs 29:2

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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