Category Archives: Church Discipline

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Death of a (Postmodernism) Sales(person): The Sad Passing of Rachel Held Evans

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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 9:27-28

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019,  divorce law reformers were again in front of the Texas House of Representatives, testifying in an effort to get the repeal of unilateral  (non-consensual) “no-fault” grounds to advance from that committee, a bill identical to the one that had been voted out of the same committee two years before, whereupon that bill died a mysterious death before it could be brought to the floor of the full house for a vote, and before the legislature adjourned for two years.  This time, related bills under discussion, HB922 and HB926 occupied about an hour of the late evening 3-hour session for testimony, while one bill seeking to protect wedding officiants from (homosexualist) liability by allowing them to recuse themselves, where conscience before God would be violated, (HB2109) preceded this debate and took more than 90 minutes of that time.   During the discussion of the supposedly “homophobic” recusal bill, one recently-elected millennial lawmaker from a district north of Austin responded to the testimony of Cecilia Wood, a family law attorney of 32 years, there to testify in support of HB922 eliminating non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce, but also a supporter of the right to recuse from officiating weddings based on religious conscience, as follows (@ 8:30):

Rep. Talarico:  “Two comments and a question:  of course, allusion to the civil war (sic) important, but there was also a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war.  Second, you mentioned Christians staying home.  There are many Christians on this dias, including me who don’t hold discriminatory beliefs….”

“Woke” social justice writers like Ms. Held are largely responsible for the extrabiblical notions of young Mr. Talarico and too many of his generation:

(1) Belief that one can be a follower of Christ without embracing and obeying His teachings on morality and sexual ethics, as plainly described in the bible – both on a homosexual and heterosexual basis.

(2) The belief that biblically-immoral sexual behavior choices can constitute an “immutable” identity which can then be parlayed into valid comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1860’s and 1960’s that were based on race, biological sex and religion, i.e. “a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war…”  to pass prudent moral selectivity off as “discrimination”.   (It should be noted, however, that homosexualism is quickly becoming a sect of the larger secular humanist de facto state-religion of the United States ruling political class.)

(3) The asserted moral superiority of “social justice” Christianity over a holiness-based discipleship that better comports with the full teachings of Christ, the apostles and the early church fathers, especially in the area of sexual ethics.    The fact remains that this humanist pseudo-religion is the very antithesis of actual Christian discipleship in every respect.

(4) That false analogies (in general) are excusable for the greater “good”.

To this last point, a woman’s purported “right” to disobey Christ (such as by divorcing her husband in a pagan civil court) is obscenely compared with  Martha’s sister, Mary choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him, in the RHE illustration we’ve opened this post with.

While this testimony was occurring in Austin, TX, another kind of eternal tragedy was occurring in Tennessee in the Evans household, a covenant holy matrimony union of 16 years, with two children.


Dan and Rachel Evans wedding, 2003

The news site, AL.com wrote on April 19:  “During treatment for an infection, Rachel began exhibiting unexpected symptoms. Doctors found that her brain was experiencing constant seizures. She is currently in the ICU. She is in a medically induced coma while the doctors work to determine the cause and solution…”     By May 1, her condition was deteriorating due to brain-swelling after she failed to come out of the coma.   As reported by  CNN:  “…Over the next 10 days and transfers between three facilities, Evans was comatose.  Doctors began weaning Evans off coma medication Tuesday, but she did not return to an alert state during this process…Thursday [the coincidental date of the committee vote in Texas], Evans had ‘sudden and extreme’ changes in her vitals. A medical team found “extensive swelling of her brain” and took emergency action”.

That emergency action was unavailing, and she died on Saturday, May 4.   Out of respect for the Evans family and their grieving process, we will be publishing this blog a day or two after her funeral.

This is the sort of dias-sitting “Christians” that Rep. Talarico was referring to in his hearing remarks were, no doubt, influenced in great measure by the evangelical darling of CNN, the Huffington Post, and a host of other liberal publications, secular and evangelical.  SIFC has a grown, married daughter four years older than Mrs. Evans, who also started adopting RHE’s views around the time her writings gained prominence on CNN, and quoting similar homosexuality-sympathizing  “Christian” writers such as Jen Hatmaker.    This tragedy hits very close to home for that reason.   It’s normal for young adults who have been raised in Christian homes to go through a season of questioning, but in these evil last days, it can be eternally fatal to purchase a home there (and turn it into a real estate office, as RHE did, with the backing of crooked investors).    Hopefully, SIFC’s daughter is “just renting”, and moves to a home with a Rock foundation in time.

Mrs. Evans joined Soros-funded Baptist feminists (Karen Swallow-Prior, Beth Moore and an acclaimed homosexual journalist) in the leftist smearing of Rev. Paige Patterson, resulting in his removal from his leadership posts in the Southern Baptist Convention last year because of his fully biblical anti-divorce views which rejected the morally rabid  “abuse” doctrines of this evangelical feminist cult.   She was quoted by Baptist News Global at the time: “Patterson’s comments need a swift and thorough rebuke from the SBC and all Christians of good faith.”    At least indirectly,  Mrs. Evans was the epitome of the “rent-an-evangelical” cadre that Soros operatives openly bragged about recruiting.

SBC leader under fire for comments about divorce, abuse

The following was typical of her views on man’s divorce, finding purported legal “dissolution” a necessary “right choice” to prevent the exploitation of women, and imagining the true protection of women under the biblical leadership of her husband “legalistic”….rather than the metaphysical impossibility Jesus taught that divorce of an original holy matrimony union actually is.    In effect,  RHE was a popular writer because she excused hardness of heart, telling her fans what they wanted to hear – at a time when nearly 70% of unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions are filed by women, and almost nobody takes provable abuse through the criminal justice system, as the bible would instead direct.

“…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

“Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!”   –  Jesus, Matt. 18:7-8

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.   – Romans 1:32

“standerinfamilycourt” would vigorously challenge the late Mrs. Evans’ assertion about the “purpose of Jesus’ words on marriage”.   Rather than protecting women from “exploitation by the system”,  those words were to protect society as a whole from self-absorbed individualism, and keep fathers firmly in authority over the generations of their families, per God’s design.

Challenging the authority of scripture on such a matter, and then (apparently) dying unrepentant is very eternally costly, at least according to one early church bishop who was martyred early in the 2nd century….

Meeting this fate while still very young illustrates the extreme danger of achieving broad influence and acclaim which is built on a foundation of sand.   It’s a mercy that God sometimes removes high-impact siren voices from our midst.   When He must do so while they are so young, it’s a strong sign of how many they were leading astray, and of His foreknowledge of whether they would ever repent.    Apparently, Mrs. Evans knew John Stonestreet of the Colson Center (Breakpoint.org) very well because they were from the same town in Tennessee, and (while he can’t quite bring himself to vocalize it), he is wondering if she ever repented before she passed into eternity last week.   We can only hope so.

We are bracing for the howl we’re going to get from the antinomians out there, as we did when remarriage adulteress Joey Feek passed away young and unrepentant in her “marriage” to another woman’s legally-estranged husband.    That blog post elicited comments from hundreds of people for days.    We didn’t write that piece to be “mean” to the divorced-and-remarried, nor will we apologize for reminding people that all of the apostles warned repeatedly about the possibility of wandering away from the faith, as directly evidenced by the levels of repentance, and spirit of obedience to Christ’s commandments, in the life under discussion.  If those who would take offense insist on doing so based on extrabiblical denominational dogma, their souls are in their own hands.   If the past is any indication, some will read this and insist that SIFC has “judged” and personally consigned these erring souls to hell, as if feeling deputized by God to do so.    This is irrational (to be as kind as possible in expressing it).    What SIFC has done is tell the audience what God’s word and early church fathers clearly said about similar situations.

“standerinfamilycourt”, as Mrs. Evans did, feels called to the role of a teacher of God’s word on the family, approaching it with a holy fear of God, and ever-mindful of the stern warning from Christ’s brother, James, about the eternal impact on the audience….

“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. “

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

 

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

Deja-Vu All Over Again: The “No-Fault” Elite Legal and Media Scam Job in the UK

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https://cordellcordell.co.uk/news/divorce_in_the_uk_stats_and_facts/
by Standerinfamilycourt

And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
– Mark 10:11-12

This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now.  In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance.    On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly –  God be praised!    On the bad side,  we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations.    Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.

Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”.      Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S.  Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.

Where is the voice of British church leadership (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist) in defending the biblical Matthew 19:4-6 family?  (Indeed, it appears that the Queen’s counterpart to the U.S. Attorney General are aggressively pushing this deeply flawed policy legislation which 20 years ago failed its pilot testing in the UK and was scrapped).

Where is the mention of the sad fact that enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws has caused U.S. church doctrine to decay and church morality to utterly disintegrate?

Where is the mention that enactment of forced, “no-blame” divorce has rendered most U.S. states unable to balance their budgets?

Where is the disclosure that many of the states depend on Federal funds derived from taking children away from their fit parents and trafficking them to foster homes to narrow their deficit gaps?

Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent  attorneys out of their pockets?

Where is the mention that enactment of these statutes has literally ballooned the size of state and Federal government in the U.S.?

Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?

Where is the mention of all the U.S. constitutional attorneys who have testified before state legislatures that they believe the U.S. unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws violate the Respondent’s fundamental constitutional rights in numerous ways?

Indeed, where is the mention of the mounting traffic in repeal and reform measures being filed each year in the various U.S. state legislatures because the system is failing?

The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”.      Hello?

Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate:    the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors.  
Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue,  so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public!   If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary  DivorceCorp,  and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.

And, oh, the shrieking, howling headlines from “across the pond” last year when Mrs. Owens (who most likely was recruited by the greedy elite special interests for the rarity and emotional pull of her case) lost her high court challenge by unanimous decision and was forced to wait one more year to immorally abandon her elderly husband while taking spoils.
“The courts can’t make Tini Owens love her husband!” whined Suzanne Moore at The Guardian.
“Nobody’s fault but the law”  echoed her Guardian colleague, Owen Bowcott.
“Tini Owens is locked into an unhappy marriage – this is why we need ‘no fault’ divorce”  (Guardian, again – Laura Barton).
“Tini Owens forced to stay married…”  howled the UK Daily Mail.

“Barbaric!” they all hissed.    Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations,  for both intact and government-shattered families.

Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands!    How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.

The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:

“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.”   –  Daily Mail, July, 2018

Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious:  Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife.     The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago.  It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.

Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”:  emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.

As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation,  including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview,  “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”

Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.

Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper,  Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative)  was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have.  ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.”   In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.”    (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)

Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world.  History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned.  As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites.    According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women.    She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S.  womens’ bar groups.  Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak).    We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships).   Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery.    The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.

These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another”  in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench.   On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.


This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” –  rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.

In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed).    Both were unstable situations, however, must the UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences?   What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period?  Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven?   As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.

No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed.  It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities  (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. )  Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,

“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.

“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.

“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”

So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign,  the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.

Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,

“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad

“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation.  I will have to write or email him a letter,  we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this,  yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”

Perhaps this Cornish friend will now be able to educate her MP about the five-decade U.S. adventure in state-enforced family shredding, and inform him that a growing number of people in the States don’t think setting back the family clock 50 years is actually that bad an idea.    This is not yet a “done deal”.    Bad policy was enacted and repealed before in the UK.   This is even worse policy, and does not deserve to be enacted, despite the powerful endorsements.   Even India had the common sense to repeal faultless unilateral divorce practices in their country, ruling them unconstitutional violations of equal protection and property rights.

Discretion will guard you,
Understanding will watch over you…
To deliver you from the strange woman,
From the adulteress who flatters with her words;
That leaves the companion of her youth
And forgets the covenant of her God;
 For her house sinks down to death
And her tracks lead to the dead;
 None who go to her return again,
Nor do they reach the paths of life.
–  Proverbs 2: 11, 16-18

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

 

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Letter from Menlo Park Jail

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas … But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. “
(Rev. Martin Luther King, April 16, 1963)

Today marks a major milestone in the ministry of “standerinfamilycourt”.    Someone was “triggered” over our blog on antinomianism and the Christian media pandering-for-profit to so-called “blended families.”    Interestingly, the Facebook crew had just 24 hours earlier, approved this particular post to be “boosted” in a paid ad, deciding at that time, it met their “community standards”.

Of course we weren’t talking about “the Brady Bunch” here when we discussed these “blended families”.   Back in the day,  it was as reliable as twin beds in the TV-land marital bedroom that “the lovely lady” and the “man named Brady” were both widowed.   We were instead talking about those who blatantly disobey New Testament scripture to drag their spouse before a pagan court to get “dissolution” papers, and then further disobey scripture to take advantage of biblically-immoral civil laws that allow them to “remarry” while their true spouse is still living.    Jesus repeatedly told us that this amounted to ongoing adultery, as did the Apostle Paul.

For a couple of years, “standerinfamilycourt” has watched many distinguished others (who are vocal online about sexual ethics) get shut down without notice, and based only on someone “reporting” a post as “offensive”, find themselves unable to operate any sites they were associated with, including their personal wall (even if that’s not where the reported  “infraction” occurred).     Those who have gone before have usually “triggered” someone in the LGBTQ community, or their sympathizers.    Meanwhile, since SIFC tends to believe that hand-wringing over mere symptoms (weaponized homosexualism, for example) of the root cancer (church leadership acquiescence to immoral and unconstitutional family laws)  is a bit futile, unless surgery is scheduled at the source of the symptoms.    “standerinfamilycourt” believes that the conditions others complain of in that realm are part of God’s slowly unfolding progressive judgment on the nation, ongoing for 50 years at least, eroding the privilege of effective constitutional protections, and which our church leadership alone could turn around, if only they weren’t utterly complicit with the breakdown in heterosexual ethics and families.   Our site has long been blessed to fly under the radar screen, so to speak, in large part because of this wholistic philosophy.    Almost never, in over four years, would a post on our site go after homosexuals for its own sake;  always such posts are tied on our pages with owning the truth about evangelical hypocrisy with regard to “sanctified”,  legalized adultery-with-paper.    As our culture continues to erode, even this is “triggering” people.    Such is the identical kind of “hate” John-the-Baptizer,  Jesus Christ, the Apostles Paul and Jude, brother of Jesus, regularly expressed.    Thank God, the penalty has been greatly reduced in our times for such “hate”.    At least for now.

“Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds… ”     MLK, April 16, 1963

Because many have “gone before” who are far more articulate than “standerinfamilycourt”, it almost seems redundant to complain (again) about the insult to our free speech protections in the 1st Amendment posed by the prevailing cultural norm: that everyone has some sort of fundamental right “not to be offended – ever“, which trumps free speech on a  tech “platform” to which our Federal government grants immunity protections from damages for harmful content, provided they don’t censor content.    Indeed, we are coming up on the anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg’s famous testimony before the U.S. senate, when Sen. Cruz asked him something like, “under the standards of the CDA (Communications Decency Act of 1996, section 230), would you call Facebook a “platform” or a “publisher”?     The CEO insisted that Facebook was a “platform”.      Yet the censorship is legendary at Facebook, and continues to grow without any sort of due process including notice or appeal.   If that sounds familiar, think back to the unsubstantiated allegations brought for purely partisan political reasons against Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall, where the accusers insisted that their mere allegation (never proven) should preempt his  very “license to operate” on the bench, or even on the coaching bench.    As MLK alludes to the need to do, “standerinfamilycourt” is still “working through” the best way to raise the necessary funds not to sit idly by behind a computer screen, but get out around the country to family policy councils, legislatures, standers’ retreats and other events, toward the end goal of abolishing forced faultless divorce and curbing adulterous remarriage in our country.

About three years ago “standerinfamilycourt” had a much-admired Australian counterpart whose Facebook community page had grown over the prior four years to just a bit larger following than Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional‘s  current 780 or so.  She was surely reaching the feeds of several thousand people each week, and she knew the traditional marriage activists in her own country well (such as the oft-incarcerated Bill Muhlenberg).   Unlike our page, this owner went as aggressively and directly after the LGBTQ community as she did the blight of sanctioned, legalized adultery saturating the church.   Then one day without warning, both her personal and her community pages disappeared, never to return.  The hope was, by way of explanation, that her estranged, prodigal husband had repented and returned.   Unfortunately, the covenant marriage stander community never found out exactly what happened to our comrade “Zipporah Moses”.    This alone should reinforce how very precious our free speech protections are to us in the United States.    Today’s gestapo are the large corporations rather than government storm troops.

“In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. ”
MLK, April 16, 1963

This blog post will be the only open whining planned by “standerinfamilycourt” over this incident.   It might be different if “demonetizing” our avenues to donation funds was on-the-line with our site, as was the case with The Activist Mommy, and PragerU.   But this ministry just isn’t quite to that point yet, and only beginning to mull over a more formal future, with clarified objectives and a strategy roadmap currently being deliberated.   We will continue to defy the Community Standard to the full extent necessary to put the biblical truth or other reliable facts across, but with no intentional offense being targeted at anyone.    We aim to do so lovingly, and we do accept the full consequences or penalties for our choices, as graciously as possible, making the most of the time as the days grow evil.    But for crying out loud, this time we “triggered” a white, female evangelical with the “offensive”, verbatim word of God!

Elizabeth Johnston, “The Activist Mommy” probably has a special place in her wardrobe for her Zuckerberg “slammer attire”, given her “hate” recidivism.  We believe her initial “conviction” (more accurately, her accusation via “reporting”) was about a year ago.    Early this week she had the delight to report in her blog on legislation introduced in the Florida Senate, which would fine social media firms $75,000 for each occurrence of censorship actions taken for political and religious reasons.   Please support FL  SB1722  and ask your own state representatives to sponsor similar bills.    While this may seem like a slap on the wrist to the tech giants, the cumulative occurrences would soon add up, and just may help to trigger actual enforcement of the Federal law aimed at this,  since liability is being imposed on firms for not complying with their claimed status as a “platform” due to the censorship they impose on conservative sites.    As it stands now, any person can shut down a site for a period of from 24 hours to indefinitely just by claiming to be “offended”.     That’s not due process!   And “triggered” people, especially those who claim to be “Christians”, but feel the need to “report” content that quotes holy scripture in disciplined, accurate context, well…..you have no respect for the 1st Amendment, either.

UPDATE  3/14/2019:   Well, as it turns out, “standerinfamilycourt” never did get a jail notice, and learned on Thursday that what was going on instead was a widespread and very long outage.   Our record it seems is still free of FB felonies, despite the rebuffs and occasional threats we get from offended folks.   The timing just happened to coincide with a threat by one of our disgruntled readers to report us.  Our functionality was starting to return bit by bit on Wednesday evening.     We publish this anyway, because most of the points made within are still perfectly true and valid.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.    Luke 6:26

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto

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by Standerinfamilycourt

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.   – Jude 4

Not for the first time have we blogged about this, but it seems so-called “blended families” are all the rage with anyone who wants to sell lots of “Christian” books these days.   We’re told that these “families” are “blessed” (and just for good measure, the author will “bless” them), which is a bit strange since they are snapping up all of these books as a growing demographic: “– and their numbers were added to daily by the “family courts” of the land.”
 It’s kind of predictable that the targeted market won’t learn much from these books, however, so they’ll buy more to see if the advice works out any better.   But what if….God doesn’t want these books to work any magic in these unbiblical living arrangements and immoral relationships?   What if…the cost of “blended families”, who come together for reasons other than widowhood, is too eternally high to bear?   What if… a truly loving God splits these “families” up out of eternal mercy for every member of that kind of household?

Very recently, both Ryan and Selena Frederick of Fierce Marriage.com and Kris Vallotton have posted blogs with sure-fire marriage advice for those who purportedly “didn’t plan” to wind up in an adulterous remarriage by Christ’s standards, but now need to find a way to “thrive” (rather than repent).    Ministry people who publicly spread soul-endangering heretical material to make a person feel better about remaining in their state of sin require somebody to make an attempt at an equally public, respectful response, supplying the biblical truth.   Both of these ministries produce especially effective memes that are highly encouraging to those standing celibate until the Lord restores their God-joined, covenant union and removes their prodigal spouse, in true grace and mercy, from the legalized adulterous relationship they’ve fallen into,  which they pray everyday their prodigal will live long enough to repent of — from the heart.    As with RepentanceCry.com, whose divorced pastor/founder is currently “betrothed” to a younger woman who will (unless God intervenes) sinfully supplant his true estranged wife who is still living, SIFC is left with a  dilemma over the rightness of continuing to use their materials on our pages.     Unlike the case with RepentenceCry,  neither of these other two ministries seem to be blocking dissenters at this point, so members of the marriage permanence movement are still able to exchange with them.

So….exchange several of us attempted to do!

The tennis involved with commenters, who can’t abide anyone so confronting the ministry owners who have tickled their ears and validated their sinful choices, typically goes like this for anyone determined enough to sustain the online engagement:

Lob 1 : (aimed at page / ministry owners) straightforward Matthew 19:6 / Luke 16:18 appeal that God-joined holy matrimony is not dissoluble by anything but death, and that all non-widowed remarriage was consistently called adultery by Jesus.

Return 1:  MIsuse of some combination of Matt.5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15 and Matthew 19:9 to “prove” otherwise, and point out the “error” of the lob.   (They don’t know what to do with the actual scriptures in Lob 1, but they’re certain that theirs must override.)

Lob 2:  Patient, hermeneutical explanation why the Returner’s interpretation of those scriptures to justify marrying again, while having an estranged spouse still living, is not hermeneutically correct, and suggesting that they study it further for a period of time.

Return 2:  Projectile vomiting of everything the discarded spouse did, and / or what the true-spouse-of-the-new-spouse did, that God would surely not expect anyone to stay in the marriage and tolerate… these outrages against their happiness.  (Optional insistence that Lob 2 is an untrustworthy  “private interpretation”  with denial that the Lob 1 scriptures say what they say and mean what they mean.)

Lob 3:  Reminder from Matthew 19:6, 8 that Christ didn’t leave us with a choice whether to “remain in” such a marriage, but that He said we simply are in such a marriage until one of the original partners physically dies.

Return 3:  Indignant playing of (you guessed it) – the Pharisee card, accompanied by various Pauline scriptures cited to purport that nobody is capable of living by the ten commandments, and any effort to do so is “salvation by works” and deceitful, self-righteous “boasting”.
The truncated form of Romans 8:1, quoted to omit “who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh…” is especially popular at this juncture, accompanied with “by grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works lest any man should boast.”     This, of course, is presumed to override anything Jesus ever said directly to the contrary of their sexual ethics, and asserted only to apply to those who are not “saved” yet, because those people don’t have their ticket punched by belief that their ticket is punched.

Lob 4:   A friendly reminder about the sermon on the mount, concerning obedience to Christ out of a grateful heart, and that the 613 old rabbinic regulations to which Paul was actually referring as “the law” are only suspended upon our surrender to Christ’s lordship,  perhaps quoting Luke 14:26 or Hebrews 10:26-29 or Matthew 7:21-23.  (The 10 Commandments remain in full effect, notwithstanding Luther’s objections thereto.)

Return 4: (now growing demonstrably more heated, can go two different ways – path 1,  revert to Return 1 and mechanically parrot this point again and again for the rest of the conversation, alternating this with vicious ad hominem slurs….or… shift into sorrowful-pious-humility mode with an offer to “pray” that the lobber will “get saved for real some day” – path 2, depending on the personality of the remarriage adulterer on the other side of the net, and assuming Lob 4 didn’t horrifically draw one of each, in tandem!)   It tends to get really ugly from here, but four things are clear from both types of tennis partners:

(1) what they were once sold as the terms of salvation is not matching up with what’s now being presented…

(2) who they thought they were in Christ is now being shaken to the marrow of their bones (with which we should all achingly and deeply empathize)…

(3) if it means they can’t have their “salvation” on the terms they were sold, they’re not about to take our suggestion to study up to make sure they’re as “saved” as they think they are.

(4) they must have a full retraction and apology from you, and they will stalk you by tagging, with repetitive points and demands for “answers” to extraneous questions, day and night until they get it (or you decide life’s too short and block them), even if they happen to presently be separated from said legalized adultery partner.

By this point, there is zero question that we are dealing with one or more antinomians in the conversation.  Antinomianism (from the Greek: ἀντί, “against” + νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and is against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings.  In Christianity, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion.    What they don’t take into account is that if you don’t obey, you can’t really claim to believe.    The eighteen inches from head to heart has not been spanned.  They’re stuck on simple mental assent which fails to engage their feet, in the way that the tax collector Zachheus’ feet were engaged when he came to saving faith.    Following the ten commandments is an essential element of following Christ that precludes our own presumptions about what He “would want” for us which they were hoping might suspend one or more of those “impossible-to-follow” commandments.  Jesus died, they insist, for our past, present (unrepented) and future sins!

If the site owners are paying attention, and booksellers good enough to make a living at it always pay attention, we’re about to find out if they, too, are antinomians.   All too often, booksellers appealing enough to the masses to have half a million people following their facebook  page, are almost always antinomians, not just people who honestly don’t know any better.    The exchange with the Vallotton page has not been that contentious so far, and nobody was “unduly” triggered there by the truth-tellers.    Vallotton, who has slightly under 400,000 followers seems to have a loyal opposition consisting mainly of the LGBT community and their sympathizers who are among the most vocal on that page, and that’s where most of his attention seemed to be going.    Some marriage permanence disciples had already been there, challenging the premise that “blended families” are covenant families and are holy matrimony unions, before SIFC  arrived there to comment.    This was also true on the FierceMarriage page,  where the owner’s response to the weekend proceedings arrived around noon Monday, as follows…..

“Hi everyone,
Ok, this is a very nuanced topic, and perhaps we didn’t do the intro justice. I’ll modify the introduction of the blog post so it’s not misleading, but I do want to address some things here about assumptions we’ve made—we’ve (wrongly) assumed that you know where we’re coming from and the premises we had in mind when posting this content.

“For clarity:

1: Divorce is never God’s best for any marriage, Christian or non-Christian alike. In fact, the Bible says that “God hates divorce”. (Malachi 2) It’s never His best for any marriage.

2: As a last resort, and “because of hardness of hearts”, the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce: (1) sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) and (2) abandonment by an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15). There is nuance to what constitutes “abandonment by an unbeliever” that can only be discerned on a case by case basis, with pastoral care, prayer, and biblical counseling.

3: The two grounds above shouldn’t be construed as situations “requiring” divorce. Divorce is not required or even encouraged in the above cases. They’re exceptions made, not imposed requirements. Repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are always the best possible ways forward.

4: If the divorce was for unbiblical reasons, there are no grounds for remarriage. If there are instances where divorce occurs and it’s biblically justified, remarriage is acceptable for the innocent party. (Matthew 19:9) But even then, we encourage couples to fight hard for their marriage (see #3 above) through prayer, counseling, and pursuit of each other.

5: This is a very sensitive and nuanced topic for many that requires speaking “truth in love” in a relational context. We must speak truth, yes, but we must do so in a way that encourages others in Christ, builds each other up in him, and lovingly urges holiness in light of God’s grace in Jesus. For this reason, we urge you to only post comments if you can be lovingly truthful without being brash or harsh.

6: There are other questions like, “can I remarry if I got divorced while I was an unbeliever”. This, and questions like it, are complex questions that are very hard to answer quickly. For that reason, we urge you to get biblical counsel from a pastor who knows you and can read God’s Word with you to find the answer.

7: Finally, a divorced and/or remarried believer should not feel any less loved by God. This is not to condone sin, but rather, to reiterate that our being loved by God is a GIFT (“so that none may boast” Eph 2:9) despite our sin, and is good for our salvation in eternity and our sanctification until we get there.

(Uh-oh!)

“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:

Ryan and Selena, a growing number of pastors and other serious disciples who are familiar with the history of bible versions and revisions over the last 150 years, who are familiar with church history for the first 400 years, and who faithfully apply sound principles of scriptural hermeneutics in studying this topic deeply, must respectfully disagree with several of your points.

Overall, a couple of great books by faithful men of God would be a good read for the two of you.

“One Flesh” by Joe Fogel
“Have You Not Read?” by Casey Whitaker
“Til Death Do Us Part?” by Dr. Joseph Webb

Briefly answering a few of your points:

1. God has *commandments*, not “bests”, “ideals”, “purposes”, “designs” or the like. When Jesus said, “what God has joined, let no human (anthropos) put distance between (choresthetai)”, this was in the imperative mood. This is a commandment with eternal consequences if it goes unrepented. Further, Malachi 2 is (in full context) a rebuke of his priests who divorce their God-joined wife and marry another. God makes clear this breaks all fellowship with Him until repented, because HIs covenant remains with the still-living spouse of his youth. God does not hate the divorce out of remarriage adultery with some other living person’s God-joined spouse.

2. Since when has “hardness of heart” been an acceptable attribute in a Christ-follower? This makes the very dangerous assertion that God is obligated to make allowances for our unholy attitudes. This is not scriptural in any sense. Most of us have bibles that read: if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven (Matt. 18:23-35), do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matt.5:38), do not take your own revenge (Rom. 12:19), and unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven (Matt. 5:20). On the contrary, Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 describe what happens to an indulged hard heart in a disciple.

3 and 4. Studied deeply and responsibly, we find that the so-called “biblical grounds” for divorce simply don’t exist once principled hermeneutics are applied to the scriptures relied upon. Historically, they are the invention of the homosexual humanist Catholic monk known as Erasmus Desiderius, who was unsavory company for the likes of Martin Luther and other Reformers. All of the above 3 books address this in detail, as does our blog, www.standerinfamilycourt.com. The only biblical ground for divorce is to get out of a biblically immoral relationship with somebody other than your God-joined one-flesh original mate. The only biblical ground for remarriage to somebody other than that person is widowhood (Rom. 7:2-3; 1 Cor. 7:11,39).

5. Since on three separate occasions Jesus stated, with no exceptions, “EVERYONE / whosoever / whoso marries a divorced [person] enters into an ongoing state of adultery”, and since at least twice Paul warned, “do not be deceived…adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God” (speaking only of those who die in that state), “speaking the truth in love” requires speaking the truth in eternal terms that lead to actual repentance – the cessation of the sin in order to recover that inheritance.

6. This question melts away once the evangelical myths of 5 centuries are dispensed with. Getting saved does not sever the one-flesh entity created by God’s hand with one’s true spouse, nor does it dissolve the covenant between that entity and God. Matt. 19:5-6,8 The truly regenerated person, properly discipled, should long to reconcile with their true spouse and should get out of their legalized adultery. Many manage to do so despite being discipled by hirelings, because the Holy Spirit directs their path, as Jesus promised He would.

7. It is definitely true that no sin, including even homosexuality, diminishes God’s love for us, but if we reject His commandments as regenerated people, the indwelling Holy Spirit (the main manifestation His enduring love) will drive us toward repentance. If we instead choose to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit instead of choosing to obey Him, we would be miserable in heaven for all eternity even if we arrived there, because we’d still resent moral absolutes just as we did on earth. He’s too loving to allow that. By contrast, there’s conclusive documentation from the minutes of annual conferences that many denominations in the 1970’s voted to officially change their marriage doctrine to accommodate the civil enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in order not to lose finances and members, much like what is happening now with the homosexual community in the wake of legalized gay marriage. This is not soul-care in either case. Would you not make every effort to warn the homosexual that if they persist in their legalized sexual sin, they will not see heaven?

For about 4 years, your excellent memes have encouraged covenant marriage standers who follow our page, to obey Paul and remain chaste or be reconciled to the spouse of their youth. God has convicted many prodigals to exit their civil-only “marriage” and reconcile with their covenant spouse – to His great glory. If you persist in encouraging households that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous to remain in their sin, we will be compelled to blog an explanation as to why the fans of our page can no longer rely on your ministry. Precious souls are on the line here. You have used a public platform to advance a dangerous heresy (albeit you likely didn’t know any better). The godly response, therefore, needed to be equally public. Now you have ample basis for our suggestion that you study this a bit more purposefully, and we pray that you do.

We truly wish there was a “loving, nuanced” way to warn people that what they thought was holy matrimony, Jesus actually regards as ongoing adultery, and that it’s a heaven-or-hell matter. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse.” Prov. 27:6

“Let not many become teachers, for they will incur a harsher judgment.” James 3:1

 

Nobody relishes rebuking a ministry leader, or even an individual, in front of 500,000+ followers, and it should never be done lightly.   The starting presumption should always be that they didn’t know any better, and the rebuke should never be more public than their infraction was — but the people to whom false doctrine was disseminated need the faithful biblical truth, even if unpleasant exchanges with “triggered” people must be endured, and even if it means the page owner cuts us off as “divisive”.     There has been no further response all afternoon from the Fredericks, who seem to have become the infallible dispensers of marriage wisdom after less than 15 years’ experience.    By the grace of God, may they remain so, in a world where “gray divorce” is the only growing category, and the church is growing increasingly immoral in all things marriage. That they have not been so quick to respond the second time seems like a good sign of character.   Hopefully, they’re on Amazon right after dinner, looking for those three excellent books “standerinfamilycourt” recommended.   “Standerinfamilycourt” was once a notorious antinomian, too, mentally equating all sins great and small, until the great and eternally merciful shaking came!

More probably, something needs to be said privately to Kris Vallotton, in light of his restrained response to those correcting him, but whose closing words in his blog piece go so far as to formally “bless” households Jesus called adulterous, and to encourage the divorced that “they can love (somebody other than their estranged, true spouse) again”:

“If you have been through a divorce and remarried, I bless you today. I bless your family and your children— both your biological kids and your step-children! I encourage you to say out loud that you receive this blessing for yourself and for your family!

“If you’ve been through a divorce and are single, I want to tell you today that you will love again.

(   SIFC: People who have “been through a divorce” are NOT “single” unless their spouse is dead, or their spouse was already someone else’s spouse and not actually theirs in the first place.)

“Hear me: You WILL heal, and you WILL love again! God’s redemption is bigger than anything in your past and He can do miracles that we never even dreamed of before!”

“Standerinfamiycourt” would just love to be able to influence 400,000 or 500,000 souls all at once, given what we’re trying to accomplish in amassing enough support and influence to overthrow the unilateral “no-fault” divorce regime that brought us to where we are with the harlot church of today.    But this will likely never be, because the moral price of discouraging anyone living in this sinful state from full, physical repentance is just too high, and Jesus has already prophesied otherwise:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

There’s much to say here.  Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”,  a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men.   He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages.   Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such.    Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.   

By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country.  The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).

Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.

We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics.    Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.

“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance.   This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved.   Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side.    We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations).    God never did this.   Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people.     We presume that then, as now,  there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.

In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance.   Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directly stoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce.   We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!

The authors write:

“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.”       (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)

This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats.  First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God.   The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all.    This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons.   Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.

If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not).  Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.

Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church.  Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line).    Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.  

Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit.    These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences.   SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!

SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size.   Amen!  At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently.   We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size  “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available.   SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied.   Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too  late for our country.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

“Abuse” Lies Under Every Rock: Exposing An Abusive Abuse Ministry

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by Standerinfamilycourt

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Can a ministry that seeks to speak out on behalf of physically or emotionally-battered spouses be abusive in their own practices?Due to the extreme political sensitivity of this topic, and out of a sincere desire to do no further harm to a priceless, real covenant family, this blog has been over two years in the writing.   Current events, however, are causing this unresolved, mishandled, and highly-politicized abuse issue to fester in a way that is about to be very bad for a couple of states that are in an earnest-but-neglected battle to repeal their unilateral divorce laws. “Standerinfamilycourt” will explain a bit more about that later in this post, and in depth in another post which is in the works, scheduled for release in about another week.

We all rejoiced when the good news came a little over two years ago that Pastor Saeed Abedini had at long last been released from the Iranian prison that had held him for nearly four years.     His wife, Naghmeh, put up a tireless effort to enlist those who could campaign for his release.   Shortly before the harvest of her efforts, she took to her Facebook page to disclose to her more than 85,000 followers that Saeed had developed a pornography addiction prior to being detained in Iran, and that he had physically and verbally abused her since early in their marriage.   She implied that her husband had been abusive and controlling in his most recent communications with her just prior to his release.    Upon his release, the Abedinis and Franklin Graham announced that they would be spending a few days with the Grahams in North Carolina to try and reconcile the issues in their marriage.   Yet, barely within two days of Saeed’s landing on U.S. soil, Naghmeh filed a petition in an Idaho court for a legal separation, explaining that the action was necessary to protect her children.    Since it’s hard to imagine that she could have made these arrangements while across the country in North Carolina, it seems apparent that she had pre-arranged this filing some time well-prior to Saeed’s release.    What was going on here? 

On January 24,  about a week after Saeed’s January 16 release,  a couple of months after she had publicly disclosed Saeed’s alleged abuse, this pseudo-ministry made contact with Naghmeh on her Facebook page.   She indicates that she had been reading their blogs.

Naghmeh_ACFJ

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC Note:   It is obvious that if physical abuse endangers a spouse or children in the home, separation for a season is absolutely necessary, and reporting it to the criminal justice authorities is equally imperative.    The latter seldom happens, however, since it’s cheaper and more private to run to the so-called “family court” system, and since almost nobody in our culture today buys into the unchangeable biblical truth that “remarriage” constitutes soul-destroying adultery in God’s eyes, with no excuses and no exceptions.  Emotional abuse, however, can be “in the eye of the beholder”,  and is difficult to objectively assess, measure or prove.     This is all the more reason why Paul’s inspired instructions to the church in
1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 is timeless in its remedy for domestic violence cases (which didn’t suddenly arise in the 21st century, most likely), especially against the backdrop of biblical truth– that man’s civil paper does not unjoin what only God can unjoin, and does not dissolve the unconditional covenant with God, in the case of the original marriage of our youth.   Nor has a piece of civil paper ever “protected” anyone from any form of abuse.

The unilateral divorce laws were driven by a desire not to have to prove marital fault for this very reason, i.e. that there’s an expense to do so along with ugly public airing of personal misconduct, and attempting to do so might still fail for lack admissible evidence, etc.    The mantra about “forcing women to stay in an abusive marriage” (even if it’s for only a slightly longer period) is an overblown, emotionally-driven exaggeration, but it becomes irresistible to the economically-hurting, and to the emotionally-wounded.

This reckless “no-fault” ideology, however, ignores the equal protection and due process obligations that the civil authorities also owe the accused under our Constitution, including all state constitutions.   Current law, as well as these “ministries”,  presume the accused to be guilty based solely on the allegation, and in effect, deny the accused  even a trial, before parental and property rights are cut off.     They are hugely responsible for toxic impacts on the very children they claim to protect, by using the state as a vehicle to allow the petitioning party to alienate the accused party from their God-given parental rights.   All too often, the “abuse” that is alleged is never objectively examined, and on this slippery slope it sometimes amounts to little more than individual perception, out of a self-focused spirit and with the egging-on of financially interested “professionals”.

We’ll spend a little time extracting from the web page of this “ministry”,  and a similar one,  Spiritual Sounding Board, which is currently at the center of a Leftist move to remove a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president who related in an interview that he had refused to counsel divorce in a mild (and quite brief) domestic abuse case that occurred when that pastor-molder served decades ago as a pastor himself.    We will come back to that particular incident, which is being developed more fully in a blog post, to follow.

From one of the “abuse ministry” websites, referring to a post on the other website (click through to SSB’s link):

Abusive abuse “ministries” trade on emotions and biblically-false doctrine, hoping that anyone who calls out their wicked aims and antichrist direction will be censured for “adding to the suffering of the abused”.     Their ideology castigates churches who are faithful to the word of God, accusing them of “devaluing”  and “objectifying” women.   They “cry wolf” at all churches who follow the precepts of Jesus and Paul, with the effect that where there truly is a questionable church, such as the one that unsuccessfully sued Spritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith for defamation in 2012,  or Greg Locke’s Tennessee church,  the broad paintbrush stroke they employ intimidates many other pastors into appeasing this Jezebel spirit instead of following the way of Christ.    Worst of all, they add to the spiritual delusion of the abuse victims, steering them away from the biblical instruction that is truly available for them, and which truly works, both in the temporal life and with souls in eternity.     When God delivers supernatural protection and miraculous transformation of the abuser, birthing him or her into the kingdom of God, they discredit even that, because it conflicts with their pro-divorce, feminist narrative.    These “ministries” would have considered the Apostle Paul a “misogynist” (to the full extent they couldn’t get away with misquoting him, and with “sanitizing” his instructions to wives).

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband  (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

The Apostle Peter,  similarly “misogynistic”….

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, 2 as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. ….

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;  not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.  For,

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?  But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.


The above-posted  February, 2016 article by Spiritual Sounding Board,

Saeed Abedini and Franklin Graham Promote “Couples Counseling” to Reconcile the Abedinis. Because of Saeed’s Abuse, is This Counterproductive?

raises a few valid points:

– the offender (if he / she is actually such) must want to change before change is possible

– the victim(s) and offender do need physical separation for the necessary season

– individual counseling is typically necessary before couples-counseling is likely to succeed

…but the article reaches a destructive and unbiblical conclusion that jeopardizes the souls of everyone involved: husband, wife and children.    It also adds to the lethal effects on society as a whole, because it rushes the parties into the immoral, permanent abandonment of their marriage (unless the Lord intervenes some years later) under man’s false paper.    In some cases,  namely, the great many cases where the “marriage” was biblically unlawful at inception, this is an eternal mercy.    But in every case where God-joined holy matrimony was involved between some combination of a widowed or never-married man and woman,  this wicked, murmurring spirit is an abomination for which God will hold these practitioners responsible.

On the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,

So they are no longer [never again] two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate…Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

The Greek word for the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used in Matt.   19:6  is “choresthetai”  which referred to the furrows between rows in a plowed field.   An effective translation of this word is, “to put distance between.”   That is a very apt description of how these groups operate.   In Proverbs 6, God calls that an abomination.

These “ministries” actively foment and promote biblically-forbidden hard-heartedness, using clever labels, slanderous emotions and caustic publicity.   Here, they arrogantly presumed that Franklin Graham would not have steered the Abedinis to the appropriate resources, had he been free of their own salacious publicity and interference.   Spiritual Sounding Board (incredibly) asks why Franklin Graham didn’t defer to the Abedinis’ home pastor in Idaho for the counseling, but a look at the facebook traffic and the writings of these groups just prior to this 2016 post makes that a hypocritical charge.  The ugly reality is that the avenue of working with the home church was effectively foreclosed because, long before Saeed’s plane from Iran had even landed, they had already demonized that Utah home church as “hiding” and “enabling” the abuser, until Naghmeh was rendered unwilling to submit to that pastor’s legitimate spiritual authority.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones     Proverbs 12:4

 

WHAT DOES A GODLY, SCRIPTURAL ABUSE INTERVENTION EFFORT LOOK LIKE?

When banks train their staff how to recognize counterfeit bills, they are said to have them spend some time closely studying the real thing.    We can profitably do the same here.    These are the traits of a biblically-faithful and effective abuse and endangered-marriage ministry:

(1) It prays that the justification and sanctification experience will be genuine and renewed in both marriage partners (Luke 13:3; Matthew 7:21-23)

(2) It counsels a sole regenerated partner in servant-leadership and seeing their offending spouse the way Jesus sees them (1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 16)

(3) It refrains from suppressing the uncomfortable truth about the eternal and societal consequences of our individual choice to obey or disobey God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:7-8; Hebrews 13:4)

(4) It banishes the evangelical weasel-words:  “ideal”, “design”, “purpose”, “intention”, “best” (etc.) from reference to marriage indissolubility, and replaces those words with REALITY, and COMMANDMENT.  (Matthew 19:6; Malachi 2:13-15)

(5) It draws a scripture-based distinction between lawful and unlawful marriages, and counsels accordingly, with souls and generations in mind (Matthew 5:27-32; Luke 16:18-31; Matthew 19:9b-KJV; Mark 10:11-12; Malachi 2:14-15)

(6) It recognizes the spiritual warfare, demonic nature of holy matrimony destruction, and trains the believing spouse(s) in the spiritual weapons (in a separate session with the believing spouse, if necessary) –  Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:4-6

(7) Where criminal behavior is evident and provable, it counsels toward criminal court, not “family court”  (Romans 13:1-4; Matthew 22:20-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(8) It frankly warns that a holy God recognizes neither man’s “divorce” nor attempts to “remarry”, despite the widespread iniquity they observe in the church  (Matthew 19:8; Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b; Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39)

(9) It builds a deliberate knowledge base about the biblical validity, theology, practice methods, track record and faith of other marital therapists, and makes that available

(10) It attempts to advise against and mediate with authorities to eliminate relationship-hindering elements such as objectively-unnecessary no-contact and restraining orders

(11) It attempts to mediate with the pastor if there is an unbiblical element of the home church’s doctrine on marriage, divorce or remarriage, and it encourages submission to the leadership of the home church unless there is a biblically-solid reason not to (for example, unqualified pastor who is divorced and remarried)
– 2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6

(12) It teaches the biblical authority / responsibility structure of the home  (1 Corinthians 11:3)

(13) It cooperates with biblically-administered church discipline, and it helps to bring either or both spouses back into soft-hearted submission to valid church authority (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; James 5:19-20)

(14) It organizes essential material resources that enable the spouses to follow God’s instructions to separate chastely, and remain married (James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5:3-8; 1 Corinthians 7:11)

(15) It hones a skill set in defusing unhelpful, divisive emotions on both sides, and models longsuffering (Jeremiah 17:9; Galatians 5:22; Matthew 16:24)

(16) It leaves the control of the timeline in God’s hands, honoring Christ’s commandments not to take our own revenge and not to resort to pagan courtrooms (2 Peter 3:8-9; Romans 12:19;
1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(17) It operates under the fruit of the Spirit, and educates everyone involved about the works of the flesh, including the fact that all forms of humanistic thought directly conflict with following Christ, and examines common wrong assumptions and motives for humanistic thought.  (Galatians 5:22-23;  Matthew 16:24-25)

Of course, these steps are the very antidote to secular humanism and temporal values that today masquerade as “discipleship”.    Several of these elements expressly conflict with the feminist ideology of these groups.   “Standerinfamilycourt” makes no apologies for any of them, however “enabling” and “misogynistic” they may be deemed to be.    Most importantly, several of these ministering essentials cannot be accomplished in the virtual world, nor by buying the hawked publications on offer.   Hence, these “ministries” have virtually no biblically-valid role in the kingdom of God.

Now that we have a picture of what a biblically-valid ministry to physically and emotionally-battered spouses looks like,  we’re ready to meet the people and examine the philosophies behind Spiritual Sounding Board, and A Cry for Justice, while holding their characteristic dogmas and practices up to the light of scripture.

Julie Anne Smith, owner of Spiritual Sounding Board is a Washington resident who began blogging a few years ago on what she views as “abusive churches”, following an incident in 2010 or 2011 that affected her and other friends and family members at Beaverton Grace Bible Church, where the pastor at the time was Charles O’Neal, who remains the current head pastor.    Unlike her former pastor, Julie Anne doesn’t really tell us too much more about her own background, except that she was a home-schooling parent for 23-1/2 years.   Presumably, she’s been a homemaker for the bulk of her pre-blogging career.    She does not disclose on her site her education, professional experience, or even her account of coming to faith.    The summons of the dismissed suit quotes several online statements by her and various co-defendants, but none of the allegations are specific enough to cite any biblical authority to substantiate those opinions.     She apparently gets extensively interviewed around the Pacific Northwest area as a result of the dismissed lawsuit, but to her credit, she is apparently not hawking books.   A defining quote from her “About” page gives an idea of what she defines as church-orchestrated abuse:

“Another part of my story is connected with the Homeschool Movement – the subculture within the fundamental Christian homeschool group which includes practices such as: full-quiver, courtship, Patriarchy, stay-at-home daughters, modesty/purity teachings (the church/pastor who sued me also was connected with the Homeschool Movement).

“As a long-time homeschooling mother (23+ yrs), I have seen how some of these practices, especially the ones that devalue/depersonalize women and girls, have caused great harm, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have a big problem with abuse in our Christian groups!”

While the primary purpose of this blog post is not to critique churches, we must start by saying that just because disaffected congregation members may personally disagree with biblical concepts such as encouraging large families, modest dress, chastity, honoring homemaking as a career choice, submission to the biblical family-structure, discouraging contemporary dating practices, none of this automatically renders a church “abusive”, unless members are chained there and not permitted by some strong mechanism to “vote with their feet”–or there is substantive evidence of financial abuse of church resources, or perhaps sexual immorality in the leadership.
The church’s website does not make any disclosure of a church board or plural leadership, which discerning folk should probably take as a potential “red flag”,  especially where there is more than one campus–which appears to be the case here, but this is the typical operating model for that denomination.     There seems to be pretty good disclosure of these facts on BGBC’s web page, which should best be left to the judgment of the public, in the absence of non-public malfeasance that could not be resolved according to biblical principles with Pastor O’Neal.    If there is any scriptural authority for any of Mrs. Smith’s opinions, she does not seem to cite them in her blog posts (even though she does appear to provide an extensive list of links to the work of others on a separate Resources tab).   Indeed, even when she is citing “experts” in her own writings on handling marital abusers, the typical link is not to a social science publication, but to a newspaper summary of an emotion-gripping incident, itself having no links to social science support.

The best that can be said of the 2012 lawsuit incident is that both sides seem to have behaved unbiblically.    The fact that the suit was dismissed, while the outcome seems correct and just, does not exonerate the public slander, reviling and lack of submission on Mrs. Smith (and company’s) part to biblical authority while voluntarily a part of the church.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,  idolatry, sorcery, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, outbursts of anger, DISPUTES, DISSENTIONS, 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.

The fact that Pastor O’Neal felt compelled to bring the matter before pagan judges to protect perceived financial interests does not speak very well of him, either, by biblical standards.   Neither party seemed to have acted in a way that was a good witness to the community.    Smith does not give a “what we believe” section, and  tells us nothing further that creditably justifies her site, but she does provide what looks like a good resource list to help individuals decide for themselves whether they are involved with an abusive or controlling church, and ought to simply move on quietly.    Smith’s motives, however, seem vengeful and controlling (at least, intimidating) in their own right.   It should go without saying that church discipline and biblical admonition are valid and scriptural in the absence of any factors indicating mistreatment of those elements, and are not, in and of themselves, “controlling” behavior, as Spiritual Sounding Board frequently alleges.

Mrs. Smith goes on to tell us about her association with another blogger on the topic of church abuse, by the name of Brad Sargent, who goes by the moniker, “futuristguy” .     His role in this site does not seem extensive, but he’s described as having compiled the library of links to the lawsuit documents, and as a “survivor of church abuse”.   Evaluation of his materials will be outside the scope of this blog, while noting that he did write a blog on the Mars Hill Church controversy that led to the litigious 2014 removal of founding pastor, Mark Driscoll for pastoral misconduct.    Sargent’s own blogsite does not seem to be fixated on interference with families, but he did also weigh in separately on the recent Paige Patterson controversy.

It was to Spiritual Sounding Board that Christian homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt reportedly brought the year 2000 radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and scheduled speaker for the mid-June annual conference in Dallas of the Southern Baptist Convention.   In magpie fashion, Mrs. Smith proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition with over 3,000 signatures for Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post, which is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow, May 22.    Swallow-Prior has been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.   There are suggestions that various Southern Baptist arms, including the ERLC, have benefitted from the largesse of George Soros’  Open Society Foundation,  and this Dallas seminary coup, if successful, has strong implications for the unilateral divorce repeal debate in Austin that resumes with the 2019 legislative session.

In the four-minute audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing he could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries”, already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    Not that Dr. Patterson should be required to bow and scrape before these militant hussies, it is an important point of chronology that this interview pre-dated the inception of these groups by several years, so it is a bit unreasonable to even accuse him of “insensitivity”.   From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).    He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady, rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as in their smear campaign.

He told this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Folks, that’s how it’s supposed to work in the kingdom of God!
In fact, something similar happened nearly 40 years ago in SIFC’s home.

...Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
– Matthew 21:31

That formerly abusive man will get into heaven before any of these harpies trying to remove Dr. Patterson will, trust me.   No civil paperwork needed.    In fact, the rebellious filing of a divorce petition, in direct violation of 1 Cor. 6:1-8, is the trigger that tends to create much of the violence, along with the illicit presence of an immoral relationship which an insecure woman who is not submitted to Christ will often herself introduce, in her own abusiveness toward the marriage.   On the other hand, a biblical, chaste separation, where the abuser knows and trusts that their spouse remains committed to the home and to reconciliation, will often lead to genuine repentance.
I find a little bit of flaw with Dr. Patterson’s articulation, but no fault whatsoever with his conduct.   The fact that these condemning women have so much open disdain for God’s word and for His ways tells me all I really need to know about their characters, and about their qualification for the “ministry” they claim.

In contrast to Spiritual Sounding Board,  the “ministry”  A Cry for Justice is a bit older and more established.
(Note: we have removed the earlier reference to tax-exempt nonprofit status  which was in error, after ACFJ advised this was not correct.)

When founded in 2012, it was run by Pastor Jeff Crippen, of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon, and by Barbara Roberts of Australia, who claims to have come out of an abusive marriage, and is presently in a biblically-adulterous remarriage with a man she also says has come out of an abusive marriage.    Both have written various books on the topic of domestic abuse / violence and the “acceptability” of divorce, since 2008-9.    Crippen is a former law enforcement professional, and bolsters the “authority” of his books with that background.   He appears to be in a 40-year covenant marriage.   Crippen makes various charges in this 2012 post against conservative Christian denominations and fellowships, some biblical, and some not-so-much, for example:

“Taking Stock

Therefore, if your church:

  1. embraces a theology  that presumes a church member/professing Christian really is a Christian, regardless of how they are living,
  2. emphasizes the headship of the husband and father and the submission of the wife and mother without getting right down to the “nitty-gritty” of what abuse of headship actually looks like, so that the men in the church even “squirm” in the pew if they are guilty,
  3. does not, like we used to, permit women to vote or to pray aloud,
  4. teaches that the marriage covenant is not to be broken, that divorce is wrong (that sounds biblical, but what it usually translates into is the clear implication that abuse is not grounds for divorce)
  5. teaches that abuse victims, normally women, are pleasing God and suffering for Christ by remaining in a marriage to an abuser,
  6. discourages (in some cases forbids) a wife from saying anything negative about her husband (this is often expressed as a discouraging ‘gossip’)

…then I suggest to you that it is not fundamentally the troubled marriage that is threatening the health of your church, but it is the climate that has been created which inevitably deals injustice to victims.”

“Injustice Destroys Unity

“As more and more people in the congregation begin to realize this injustice, unity is destroyed.  As we, pastors and leaders, dig our heels in further, all the while telling ourselves that we are standing faithful for Christ in this, we only add fuel to the fire.

“There was still another hard thing that I had to face:  just what do we think of women?  The fact is that most conservative, Bible-believing pastors like ourselves actually look down upon women.  We see them as inferior beings.  We object to this charge, but our actions betray our real attitudes.

“I had to ask myself, “Jeff, just exactly what is it that is going on in your head when a woman walks into your office and asks for help?”  The answer I ultimately saw was “I see her as an inferior being and I talk down to her.”  Really, and with ruthless honesty – “What does Pastor _________ think about a woman who walks into his office?”  “What does he think about his wife?”  Don’t rush to answers.  The first responses we give are usually wrong.”

(Extracted from “An Open Letter from a A Pastor to Pastors”,  September 6, 2012)

Crippen reportedly stepped away from the  ACFJ “ministry” in 2017, leaving it in the hands of Barbara Roberts and her assistants.   Roberts was the author of the decidedly unbiblical book, “Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion”.

Of course, the very title of this tome suggests a reliance on the too-common eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:15, which itself relies on an abusive translation of the Greek term “douloo” to include the marriage bond, and in so doing, fabricates an out-of-context “exception” for both divorce and remarriage based on a spouse’s desertion.    No one-flesh supernatural, inseverable joining for this bunch — that “demeans” women and “enables” abuse!    This book was written in 2008, and Ms. Roberts entered her adulterous union in 2011.     While our Lord says all divorce is man-fabricated, Roberts claims there is a “distinction” between a “treacherous divorce” and “disciplinary divorce”…

“Disciplinary divorce is permitted by the Bible. It applies in cases of abuse, adultery and desertion, where a seriously mistreated spouse divorces a seriously offending spouse.

“Treacherous divorce is condemned by the Bible. It occurs when a spouse obtains divorce for reasons other than abuse, adultery or desertion. I did not invent those terms by the way, I got them from another author. To explain the scriptural basis for the distinction between disciplinary and treacherous divorce took a whole book, so I’d best not try to go into it here!

“Understanding the biblical principle of disciplinary divorce is liberating, especially for the victims of domestic abuse, who have been the Cinderellas in the divorce controversy for centuries. God doesn’t say that abused spouses have to stay, put up and suffer. They are free to separate, divorce and, if they choose, remarry. They don’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the institution of marriage, at the hands of a cruel spouse and a judgemental [sic] church. They can seek freedom from bondage and rebuild their lives, without guilt or condemnation.” 

(We would add…without much of a healthy fear of God!)    So, this brings us to the nitty-gritty of the issue to remove a seminary head who is committed to biblical marriage permanence and whose actions reject the falsehoods of the “social justice gospel”.    The full (and grossly errant) ACFJ  “Position on Divorce” can be read here.

ACFJ defines “abuse” that justifies divorce as follows:  “A pattern of coercive control (ongoing actions or inactions) that proceeds from a mentality of entitlement to power, whereby, through intimidation, manipulation and isolation, the abuser keeps his* target subordinated and under his control. This pattern can be emotional, verbal, psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, social and physical. Not all these elements need be present, e.g., physical abuse may not be part of it.”

ACFJ goes on to claim on their site (without biblical authority) that the marriage covenant is “broken” by this “abuse”.   On the contrary, our bible states that, although many things violate the marriage covenant, only physical death actually breaks it.     Somebody’s obviously lying here:  either it’s Barbara Roberts, the self-interested, legalized adulteress, hoping to sell her apostate book, or it’s Jesus and Paul.    What do you think?

There is some misapplied-but-interesting lore behind ACFJ’s iconic Facebook cover:   “Saint Lucy was a rich Christian woman of Sicily who refused marriage and gave her money to the poor. Her rejected suitor (a pagan fellow to whom her mother had betrothed her) denounced Lucy to the authorities during the Diocletian persecution. The Governor of Syracuse ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused the Governor sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword in 304 AD.   A later legend says that Lucy’s eyes were gouged out as part of the persecution but were miraculously restored at her death.  In the painting Lucy is standing before the Governor who condemned her at the behest of the abuser who sought to marry her. She is pointing upward to Heaven, warning the judge of the wrath that will come upon him for siding with the ungodly. The Holy Spirit hovers over her.”

If the Holy Spirit is hovering over this (purportedly, persecuted) organization, it is a grieved and quenched one.   

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to conclude this post with some balancing thoughts by Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, The Independent Institute, and the Inter-American Institute, from his 2017 article, “How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution”:

“The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally, fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice.

“Even more serious are fabricated accusations of domestic violence, a well-known weapon in divorce courts and a tool of the feminist lobby for creating single-parent homes and depriving children of fathers. They constitute another clear and direct attack on justice. Some Christians have indeed weighed in—unhelpfully. 

“In ‘Freeing the Oppressed: A Call to Christians concerning Domestic Abuse‘, Ron Clark parrots standard, patently preposterous feminist claims (“every 15 seconds a spouse kills his wife”). His personalized definition of “domestic violence” bears no relation to plain English, with “manipulation,” “self-pity,” and even “apologies” classed as “violence.” His books are a litany of government falsehoods that are used to exacerbate the family crisis and augment government power. But even if Clark is right, then why are the other churches so silent? Here too, the church should have something to say, one way or the other.  But here too, as with divorce generally, as with rape accusations, they are silent.”

 We note that Dr. Baskerville is a tireless critic of our immoral and unconstitutional unilateral divorce laws, whose proponents are constantly seeking to justify with “straw-man” arguments, such as claims that stripping ALL (offending and non-offending) divorce defendants of their basic Bill of Rights protections is imperative to reducing spousal suicide from “feeling trapped in abusive marriages”.    While correlation studies have indeed been done that show a slight drop in spousal suicide rates with the rise in states that have passed unconstitutional “family laws”, those studies ignore important resulting factors like the hefty social costs, the suicide, homicide, physical and sexual abuse rates of children in the resulting broken homes, and the suicide rates among legally-abandoned spouses, especially those alienated from their children due to no fault of their own.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.   – Deuteronomy 16:19

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

How Discern We The Various Covenant Marriage Ministries?

18 Comments

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
– John 7:24

…and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.  – Matthew 5:22

Who are you to judge the [household] servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 

….But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.   For it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me,
And every tongue shall give praise to God.”

 So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.

Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this—not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.
– Rom 14:4, 11-13

Last week,  a deeply-respected ministry leader in the marriage permanence movement reposted an earlier-year piece that showed a photo with various faceless members of the marriage permanence fellowship he had founded, whom he said had given up on God to restore their covenant marriages, and were “no longer standing” (whatever that means in practical terms),  while blaming a range of other marriage ministries for the “confusion” that allegedly caused these folks to stray from purpose.      In so doing, he lumped several ministries, good, bad and ugly, all together in one all-encompassing “heresy bucket”, and quite possibly complained prematurely about some redemption stories that were not yet fully written by the Author.

A comment to this gentleman’s post, challenging this ministry leader to provide example evidence of unbiblical public teaching and conduct for one of those denounced ministries was  quickly deleted, and a late-night PM exchange, initiated by the ministry leader, ensued about the commenter’s alleged “disrespect” and “anger”.    In his estimation,  his own ministry audience wasn’t entitled to objective support for his position, and asking for it on his ministry wall was (in his estimation) “slander” of his integrity which constituted “accusing him of lying”.    It is always tempting to put a time and means limit on God in our human impatience.

(Furthermore, we might all be eerily reminded of one other prevalent human authority that  claims the right to press unsubstantiated charges and impose non-objective labels that require no evidence to establish–and where the slightest dissent or challenge causes immediate out-of-proportion backlash: namely,  “family court.” )

SIFC has often blogged about the intense, wearying spiritual warfare that constantly dogs the covenant marriage movement.
At our best, satan finds himself unable to assail either our theology on the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony, or our personal integrity in walking joyfully in its truth over the long term–and I do emphasize the latter.     So, the next best thing, and the low-hanging fruit for the demons of hell, is to constantly introduce endless internal wedge-issues and jealousies that discredit the movement and make it appear to be a reactionary “cult”, majoring in the minors (with our own tendency to fully cooperate, sadly).

Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,  for whoever is not against us is for us.  Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.   –  Mark 9:38-41

The offending, deleted facebook comment which was deemed “slanderous, angry and disrespectful” in the estimation of this ministry leader went like this:

“Too broad a brushstroke, my brother. Some of these “ministries” are rightly associated with each other, and in some cases it is shameful slander to associate them. We should “judge” each of these solely by what they actually teach and by the personal example of their leaders.

“You say, ‘I have personally met [the founding couple of the ministry] and have exchanged numerous communications with [the restored, repented formerly prodigal husband, now deceased] before he passed, as well as various others at all levels in their organization over the past 15 years.’ …..

“But, in fact, this is saying nothing at all that is of discernment. You are not the only one who has met and corresponded with the [extended ministry family].

“I am asking you to please stop slandering Rejoice Marriage Ministries unless you can prove that they teach falsehood or prove they live ungodly lives.   I am proud to be a monthly supporter, as I have been for over 10 years.”

Although this particular post (and others like them) have been repeatedly reposted,  the virtuous leaders of the maligned marriage ministry have never, to the best of my knowledge, chosen to answer back or retaliate in any way —  something which is very much to their credit.    Instead, they forgive, overlook, and allow God Himself to defend them, just as most individual standers must do with respect to their prodigal spouse and the sinning allies of the prodigal in their extended family.  Perhaps an argument can be made that SIFC should best follow their example (which is ultimately following Christ’s example), and this is not without biblical justification.    Unfortunately, as described in an earlier recent blog,

“On the other hand, outright slander against a very effective and godly pioneering marriage restoration ministry was actively defended by the [separate] site owner when interjected by another commenter, interfering as she was with help SIFC was attempting to provide to a new [group page] member in the crisis of his wife leaving him.   Nope, this site is clearly not safe for referrals from Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional as originally hoped. ”

….these unsubstantiated allegations are directly interfering with actual instances where opportunities to minister to real, hurting people, according to their core needs at that point, have suffered as a result of inflated egos and unfair biases.     And this disappointing public conduct is well below the normally high character of some of the players involved.

In the humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it is most just and most helpful to look at some objective attributes of these ministries and recognize that each ministry falls along a continuum, in terms of faithfulness to the kingdom of God with regard to marriage permanence.   In such a framework, we can put into perspective the really flawed ones that God nevertheless finds a way to use to His purposes, the ones in the middle that are biblically faithful but whose structure and kingdom strategies we might not personally find to our taste, and (finally) those we are most aligned with.     Attempting, as the offending post did, to put them all in one bucket is divisive at best, and ineffective-to-slanderous at worst.

Some key marriage permanence ministry attributes, from SIFC’s perspective:

1-  How consistently are their public teachings perfectly-aligned with God’s undiluted word, after applying rigorous hermeneutics?

2- Are any of their leadership, board members  or featured public  “restoration testimonies” objectively in a marriage that Jesus would call continuously-adulterous according to Luke 16:18?

3-  Do they pre-screen members according to whether they are standing for the God-joined marriage of their youth, or (instead) have an estranged, living spouse somewhere in the picture?

4-  If the latter, what is the evidence of their motive or objectives for not screening out people in who are in legalized adultery?    Is the motive godly, on balance?  (Note: this is closely tied to the first attribute.)

5-  Do they teach that dying in an adulterous remarriage is a heaven-or-hell issue, either directly or indirectly?   (Note: this is a reliable proxy for whether or not they counsel people out of their adulterous civil subsequent unions, but not necessarily a direct proxy for their beliefs.)

6-  Do they believe in and teach the concept of inseverable, instantaneously-joined one-flesh, which can only be created and terminated by the hand of God?

7- Do they believe and teach indissoluble, unconditional covenant, including God’s participation in that individual covenant?

8- Do they explicitly understand that there is a massive difference between “marriage permanence” and “holy matrimony indissolubility”  according to Matthew 19:8 ?

If we were to assess each ministry by assigning “kingdom faithfulness points” on a scale of 1 to 10, most faithful to least faithful,  for each separate attribute suggested above, this continuum would emerge on an fairly objective basis that is far better than smearing “anyone who is not us”.    We thereby avoid the stain of judging “another man’s” house-servant unjustly within the household of God.   We give a more appropriate and measured weight to things that are more a matter of preference, rather than true doctrinal or practice issues. We also see more objectively the degree of difference between the least faithful “ministries” and the most faithful ones.   A perfect score – most faithful –  on this test is (8), and the worst possible – least faithful – score is (80).

There are some additional criteria crucial to marriage restoration ministry that are more difficult to assess and objectively measure for comparison purposes which have been excluded for this reason in the (8) criteria chosen above.   The most important of these is the rate and extent they are leading those  they attract, and to whom they minister, to saving faith in Jesus Christ.    A ministry that decides as an operating principle to screen out those who are in estranged “marriages” Jesus called adulterous (but they are not ready yet to admit it) is quite likely excluding the religious unsaved to a large extent, given how pervasive divorce and remarriage is in the cultures  of all western nations.  Therefore, the testimonies of people who say they authentically came to the Lord as a result of their marriage crisis, and learned to stay in Him regardless of the marriage outcome, are important.

Catholic-based ministries have proven, in “standerinfamilycourt’s” opinion and experience, to be very effective at  influencing the broad culture for marriage permanence.   However, because by official doctrine, they weight the guidance of their human leadership as equal to or above the actual canonized word of God, it is not really an apples-to-apples comparison to rate them, under these eight criteria, against evangelical Christian marriage ministries who claim to hold themselves directly responsible for operating according to God’s written word alone.    Hence, Mary’s Advocates, The Ruth Institute and National Organization for Marriage can probably be compared with one another using some of these guidelines, but they will be excluded here, since they are not part of the divisive controversy that keeps surfacing in the permanence of marriage community.

Here’s an example of scoring outcomes for ten evangelical ministries that in some way help people fight for what they perceive to be their marriage – with a brief description of each, their score, and the main factors influencing each score.   Each of these received either a “10”, a “5” or a “1” on each of the 8 criteria, to keep things simple.    Long-term consistency of practice, or official public statements in a given criteria resulted in either a “10” or a “1”, while observed minor inconsistencies in specific criteria resulted in a “5” being assigned.   These are arranged in descending order by raw score, from most-to-least supportive of “marriages” called adulterous by Jesus, Paul, the other Apostles, and the early church fathers prior to the Nicene period:


Family Life Today (score: 80) – Founded by covenant couple Dennis & Barbara Rainey, this ministry holds to the traditional unbiblical Protestant “exceptions” for adultery and abandonment.   It also employs Ron Deal, the infamous “blended family pastor” who is divorced, with a living true spouse, and remarried, who is prominently featured on most of their broadcasts and special events.   Hence, they are misaligned with scripture in several crucial heaven-or-hell matters, and register negatively on all of the other biblical faithfulness criteria.    Any claim on the part of this ministry to preserve “covenant” marriage is based in part on a faulty definition of what constitutes a covenant marriage.
Scale:  this ministry’s facebook community page has about 450,000 followers.


Focus on the Family (score: 80) –  James Dobson-founded evangelical and political organization with some leadership and board members in adulterous subsequent marriages following man’s divorce from their true spouse. Similar theology to Family Life, and they regularly feature the “blended family pastor” as a guest on their broadcasts.     This broadcast ministry regularly glorifies adulterous remarriage and features theological guest interviews with such enemies of covenant marriage indissolubility as Dr. John MacArthur, where extra-biblical “exceptions” to the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony are emphasized above the bulk of what Jesus had to say to the contrary.
Scale: their facebook community page has 2.85 million followers.


N.A.M.E.  (score: 80) – National Association for Marriage Enhance ment is a church-based network of marriage counselors founded by the late Dr. Leo and Molly Godzich, and currently run by Pastors Arnold and Gwen Tackett, who are professional counselors and hold credentials with the Assemblies of God.   This organization holds large conferences, and established local church-based chapters.   Their score reflects the errant theology of the 1973 Position Paper of the Assemblies of God on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage, and the fact that N.A.M.E.’s 20th annual conference in 2015 featured — guess who?   Ron Deal, the “blended family pastor”.    Some of the “marriages” they attempt to save are adulterous remarriages, which hinders the reconciliation of the true covenant marriages that were displaced by the adulterous civil unions.   There does not seem to be a central facebook presence for this ministry, only local chapters.


Covenant Keepers International (score: 70 ) –  This is a very large international ministry with many local chapters with local leaders.   Unlike N.A.M.E. it is not primarily church-based, nor focused on professional counseling.    It was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Marilyn Conrad, a stander whose husband passed away before there was an opportunity to reconcile.  Current directors are Rex and Carolyn Johnson, a restored covenant couple.    This ministry reportedly has some local leadership in marriages Jesus would call adulterous, and they do not screen such couples from their ministry,  but this can vary by chapter location.   Their statement of beliefs on marriage indicates belief in an “exception” for “sexual immorality”, hence their doctrine appears to have some serious gaps, and they do not believe in no-excuses indissolubility as part of their conviction on marriage permanence.  CKI got 5 split points each for criteria 2 and 7, otherwise scoring was the same as for the three organizations listed above them.    Standers involved locally with CKI give them high marks for focusing on basic discipleship, the priority of each person’s direct relationship with Jesus, and these particular standers would avoid an adulterously-remarried chapter leader.    Scale:  the central ministry does not seem to maintain a facebook page, allowing the local chapters to do so, with typically 100-200 followers each.


Desiring God (score: 55 ) –  This ministry was established by Dr. John Piper and is an extension of Bethel Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.    Dr. Piper is faithful to the teaching of Christ concerning the indissolubility of the covenant marriage of our youth, but the Calvinist nature of this church prevents the full biblical belief that believers can fail to inherit the kingdom of God after professing Christ, even if they divorce, remarry, and die in that state.   He and his associated pastors teach against remarriage after divorce, but if those things do occur, they teach that repentance from those subsequent unions is “repeat sin”, and that those second vows supercede the original vows.  Based on these facts, criteria 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8 were rated at 5 points, reflecting assumptions that there would be some leadership and membership in adulterous unions in this large, Calvinistic ministry, and Piper’s teaching on the covenant nature of marriage is watered-down a bit from the true biblical standard, with basic doctrine skewed by their belief that rewards may be lost from remarriage, but not one’s entrance into the kingdom of heaven.    Finally, there would be a belief in permanence, but not indissolubility, if second vows can be deemed to supercede original vows.   Scale:  This ministry’s facebook page currently has just under 1 million followers.


Rejoice Marriage Ministries (score: 25 ) –  This is probably the oldest ministry dedicated to supporting those standing for their authentic covenant marriage aside from Covenant Keepers.   It was established in the early ’90’s by restored couple, Rev. Bob and Charlyne Steinkamp.    In the early days they say they interacted with Covenant Keepers which was also in its infancy and hadn’t yet expanded into geographic chapters.    Unlike CKI, Rejoice has never done so, and in fact, for many years (notably, until a bit after former prodigal, Rev. Steinkamp passed away, and the adult children were added to the leadership of the ministry) they actively discouraged standers following their ministry to develop contact with one another.      For this reason, the “levels of leadership” their determined ministry critic claims to have corresponded with, simply don’t exist.   Since this critic refuses to disclose any details about that, it’s difficult to comment further.   Nevertheless, this remains a very flat and closely-held leadership structure consisting of all born-again family members, all of which reflect God-joined, original covenant marriages.    There is some paid office help and web administrators, some volunteer prayer warriors who have been with the ministry for many years.   They publish and distribute a wealth of free and low cost books, audio and video content, prayer cards, bumper stickers, and the like, to support covenant marriage stands.

Rejoice does not have a fixed annual conference schedule. They take their ministry “on the road” for conferences periodically, as and when the Lord leads, and they conduct large monthly bible studies locally which are now live-streamed and recorded.    They periodically hold large, international conference calls when they have covenant stander testimonies to share, but not on any fixed schedule. “Standerinfamilycourt” attended the December, 2010 funeral of Bob Steinkamp,  has personally met the family members, and has been by the very modest longtime home of founder Charlyne.    On a separate occasion, SIFC attended a 3-day road conference live and on-site.

As noted, Rejoice is followed by many who are estranged from remarriages and who prefer to stand for the wrong prodigal partner.  This is a direct consequence of a longstanding ministry philosophy of not screening out those whom they might potentially lead to Christ for the first time.    It is very important to note that SIFC has not, in more than 12 years, ever seen one instance of this ministry compromising, diluting or suppressing the word of God to attract or retain anyone.    They strongly emphasize personal discipleship as the stander’s highest priority, and provide them significant aids to assist in this.    While it is certainly possible for determined non-covenant standers to tune out the portions they don’t want to hear, SIFC’s suspicion is that over time, they either repent or depart.    (We should note that the late Rev. Steinkamp’s pastoral credentials came from the Assemblies of God, and most likely before the 1973 man-voted doctrine change with which his writings make crystal-clear that he never agreed.    In SIFC’s opinion, this still had the effect on him to be careful in his published writings to tell everyone in an adulterous remarriage to “seek the Lord” about what they should do personally, but in general terms he unequivocally called all such unions sinful and in need of termination.)     Scale:  this ministry’s facebook community page has about 19,000 followers.


7 Times Around the Jericho Wall (score:  17) – as we all know, this is “standerinfamilycourt’s” own outspoken ministry, started a little over three years ago.    The original intent of the blog and facebook pages was to try and pull together a legal, constitutional “class” of disenfranchised Respondents in unilateral divorce cases to aid in a constitutional challenge to the Illinois “no-fault” law.    The Lord, however, had a different vision and took these pages in the direction of pulling together various parts of the marriage permanence community who would not otherwise be aware of each other, so that they may work more effectively together as a voice of conscience to the clergy, to lawmakers, to national pro-family voices who routinely give the indissoluble side of “biblical marriage” the short shrift.    There is significant ministry to individuals occurring behind the scenes, but not constantly.    SIFC’s professional training and background is in financial and legal matters, not formal bible training.    The Lord has provided in such a way that no donations are necessary at this time to sustain the ministry, but in the future, a taxable nonprofit (501c4) may be formed for the purpose of assisting lawmakers and constitutional challengers of unilateral divorce laws, as political opportunities come about by the Lord’s hand.   (Or the Lord may again have a different vision, to which SIFC would definitely yield).  People contacting our pages for deep ministry are typically referred with recommendations to other ministries, according to the person’s particular need, after receiving prayer here for their situation.   As is the case with Rejoice discussed above, there is no practical vision or intent to screen out people estranged from adulterous remarriages, but neither is there the slightest compromise with the undiluted biblical truth about non-widowed remarriage in anything we publish.     People who follow these two social media pages either get convicted and repent, or they “unlike” and “unfollow” us (possibly cyclically).     It has been our consistent “run rate” over the three years of our existence to lose two “likes” for every five that we gain weekly, so we grow slowly but steadily.    Our score consists of seven “1’s” in all of the criteria except #3, as it does not fit our operating model or ministry objectives to screen out anyone from participation and interaction with our ministry.    Scale:  our facebook community page has about 600 followers.


Restoration of the Family (score: 17 ) – this biblical ministry was started by another constitutional challenger of unilateral divorce laws, Judith Brumbaugh of Florida who is an older widow, and her low-key ministry has been in existence since the late 1980’s, supported by donations and sales of books.   While there is occasional involvement in some family-related Florida political issues, the primary focus is discipleship materials and biblical teaching.   As with Rejoice Marriage Ministries and 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall, there is no known pre-screening for interaction with the ministry (mailing list inclusion, etc.)    There is here a strong emphasis on personal discipleship.    Their scoring is identical to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall on all eight of the criteria, and differs from Rejoice only in that they do consistently tell people to exit adulterous marriages as a direct heaven-or-hell matter.   The founder of this page maintains only a personal wall on facebook rather than a public page, and does not classify herself as a “public figure”, so her ministry scale based on facebook’s count of followers is not available.     She shows, however to have just under 500 “friends”.


Christian Principles Restored  (score:  17 ) – This ministry was established by Dr. Joseph Webb, also of Florida.   Dr. Webb is a seminary-trained, righteously-married pastor who came under conviction through a journey of self-study about the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony.    He has written several books, done interviews, and spoken at conferences and retreats.   CPR’s scoring is identical to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall and Restoration of the Family on all eight of the criteria, and differs from Rejoice only in that they, likewise, do consistently tell people to exit adulterous marriages as a direct heaven-or-hell matter.   CPR’s pages show no evidence of pre-screening their participants so long as they are receptive to the strong truths coming out of their ministry.    Scale:  this ministry has a couple of infrequently-updated facebook pages with a following of under 200.


Theological Foundations / Spirit of Hosea (score: 8 )- Founded in the late 1990’s by Rev. Stephen Wilcox of New Brunswick, Canada, who has stood for his own covenant marriage for over 30 years, and became an ordained pastor during this time.    His ministry encompasses a large fellowship of standers and people who have repented to exit the adulterous remarriages they became involved in, and includes the information page cadz.net which carries testimonies of repentance from adulterous remarriages, a ministry web page marriagedivorce.com and a YouTube channel carrying his audio sermons.   He has an outreach to other pastors to encourage them in adopting a fully-biblical view and practice around marriage indissolubility.     In addition, he serves as the general online chaplain to the marriage permanence community, including the many who were pushed out of their churches, or who cannot find a church sufficiently supportive of marriage indissolubility that they feel comfortable in.     Scale:  this ministry runs facebook group pages to which members must be admitted by an administrator, rather than community pages open to everyone.    The Theological Foundations facebook page has just over 100 members, and the Spirit of Hosea facebook page has just over 70 members, neither of which is indicative of the very high volume of traffic on the pages outside of facebook.

Please note the vast score gap between the five ministries most supportive  of remarriage adultery and the five who are least supportive of continuing in (or attempting to restore) 2nd or subsequent “marriages” where there is one or more estranged spouses in the picture.  Note, too, that the only ministry with a “perfect” score does deliberately screen out people from fellowship who are standing for the restoration of non-covenant marriages.   The next cluster do not, to the best of our knowledge, do so but neither are there biblical gaps in their consistent teaching, either by error or omission, and they rely on this biblical  integrity to naturally winnow out non-covenant standers over time, while getting the essential message across to more of those who need to hear it.
None of this cluster of five ministries has any leadership in such a non-covenant marriage.  (Some have leaders who have repented and removed themselves from such.)  The four ministries in the cluster with a score of 17 or less actively and consistently tell one and all that dying in such an arrangement is a heaven-or-hell matter, hence, everyone needs to exit those arrangements in all cases.

Rejoice falls in between the two clusters with a score of 25, but this is not due to error or biblical omission in their teaching.  The main difference between their score and the cluster of 17’s is due to the fact that they don’t actually tell everyone  to get out of their adulterous unions (while still regularly teaching with full biblical accuracy what constitutes remarriage adultery).    Instead, they tell their readers and subscribers to seek the Lord about what to do.  They also do not directly teach that dying in such a union costs people their souls in eternity.  They do teach in general that remarriage adulterers forfeit their inheritance in the kingdom of God, but they don’t emphasize hell.    Rejoice is materially more faithful in discouraging and opposing adulterous remarriage than Covenant Keepers because Rejoice has no leaders at all in non-covenant marriages, and would never allow such.   On the other hand, none of Covenant Keepers’ founders and current central leaders are in non-covenant unions, but some of the regional leaders reportedly are.    Rejoice, on the other hand, never features non-covenant restorations in any of their teachings or events, but Covenant Keepers reportedly does.    Rejoice does regularly share audio and video testimonies of people who have penitently come out of adulterous remarriages and reconciled with their true spouse.

(Please click the graphic to enlarge in your browser.)

Sometimes, differences in ministries were actually put there by God Himself to accomplish a specific kingdom purpose.   This is true even in the least faithful of them!    This is due to cross-pollination, where a faithful ministry is provided an entry-point for conversation with the multitude of followers from something which that less-faithful ministry has published, and also through the mutual “friends” (policy-makers and national influencers among them) who are following both the pure and the popular corrupt ministries.   This is true also because of what we call “critical mass” that comes with some of these ministries that tell people what they want to hear.    While it is never appropriate to form a direct alliance with unfaithful ministries, it is appropriate for faithful ministries to speak into them opportunistically, as Jesus and the Apostles frequently did.   That said, it is never appropriate to label a ministry as “unfaithful” unless they are specifically not faithful with their public handling of the word of God.   If they are unfaithful in that way, then the clear evidence of it should be easy to produce.   If they are not, then we are accountable to the kingdom of God for slandering them as if they were.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.  So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.  Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
–  1 Corinthians 3:6-8

We might examine some of the persistent reasons why some in the stander community propagate the impression that Rejoice  fosters adulterous remarriages, and promotes their “reconciliation”, given that their teaching is fully biblical on a consistent basis, and there is no remarriage adultery at all in their leadership.   One key reason is that non-affiliated sites that are known to be run by site owners who have “married” the spouse of another living person (and are “standing” for that remarriage due to some unbiblical excuse or “exception”) extensively promote their materials.  These sites, run by non-covenant standers, regularly  redistribute Rejoice’s posts because they admire the ministry’s principles and methods.   This, of course, is beyond the practical control of Rejoice Marriage Ministries. Two examples of such non-affiliated sites with owners either in or divorced from non-covenant “marriages” are Malachi 2:16 and RMM Fan Site (which looks quite deceptively like the authentic  Rejoice site).   They are attracted by Rejoice’s  hopeful, positive salvation-and-discipling message, and the fact that non-covenant “marriages” have the (volume-based) appearance of reconciling much more frequently than God-joined unions, since this can happen over and over again in the counterfeit cases.
(Jesus, too, was accused of “apostasy” simply because the sinful followed Him, and because up to a certain point, He did not discourage them.   The actual engagement point came for Christ’s sinful followers where He made clear that what He was teaching and commanding made the difference between heaven and hell, invoking a choice.  Still today, many think they are following Him who consider obedience to be “optional” in this matter.)  

But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.   So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’   But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”  –  Matthew 13:26-30

Another important reason for the erroneous perception that Rejoice Marriage Ministries promotes the reconciliation of non-covenant “marriages” comes from the tales of those standing for true covenant marriages who attend Rejoice live events and who wind up in a prayer circle next to someone who is “standing” for an adulterous remarriage.   Since Rejoice intentionally does not have a policy to screen such people out from their ministry events, this does happen.   It is natural (and certainly expected) for those who are standing for authentic Matt. 19:4-6 unions to feel queasy about “agreeing in prayer” for the restoration of a biblically adulterous relationship, but there are certainly reasonable alternatives to so praying, and these prayer circles do not necessarily translate into “support” for such unions, on the part of the ministry or anyone else, IF biblical teaching is never compromised in their publications and events, nor shied away from by that ministry in their one-on-one encounters.

Yet another reason Rejoice is lumped in with unbiblical ministries by some in the marriage permanence movement is that Rejoice strongly encourages all standers to remain accountable to others in flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar church bodies, however difficult and uncomfortable that might be (or might become) in a given situation.   This runs directly counter to the wounded places that never healed in some individuals, and sometimes even, counter to the desire not to be accountable (on a long term basis) that is harbored in the true hearts of some in the movement, along with their deep desire to avoid the face-to-face conflict that always results from keeping up our responsibility to be salt and light in the world.    While there certainly does come a valid time to “shake the dust off our feet”,  many would prefer not to get their feet dusty in the first place.  To these folks, it becomes very tempting to slam a ministry whose faithful teachings bring conviction about this particular matter, while it offends their own rigid ideology which even has a label in the movement:  “pulpit-pew“.    Indeed, one ministry that keeps fostering these accusations is a virtual / online church (and a very good one, at that), which is sustained by the donations of people in the marriage permanence community.    By defending not only one but two potential “competitors” for those donations, it’s little wonder that this ministry leader subconsciously felt that SIFC had “attacked” his ministry with the brief and bland facebook comment that ended by disclosing longterm financial support for Rejoice.    He of little faith!

Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”   Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?     – 1 Corthinthians 1:12-13

 

“Standerinfamilycourt” can be humble enough to admit that the selection of different criteria, or perhaps disclosure of some privately-learned facts we are not privy to, might change this illustration and comparison, so we won’t presume to call it an analysis.    No deep interviews were conducted to obtain confirmation of various surface observations made in the scoring.     A few of the ministry leaders who have gone on record with their broad-brush criticism of Rejoice Marriage Ministries are from the same southern Florida region where the family ministry is based.
I do believe I have related everything these local critics have told me to-date that is verifiable.   Rejoice, meanwhile, does not make a practice of having much public interaction with other marriage ministries, choosing not to use their donated resources in that thankless, bottomless manner.   As a continuing donor, quite frankly, SIFC appreciates that.   The point of this blog post is to offer some calm perspective and good reasons to stop the senseless carping, to encourage the refocus of everyone’s time and energy within the marriage permanence community to our own assigned role, since there’s plenty of work for everybody.    Or we can just continue to play “cult” on some kingdom-inconsequential level, proving our worldly critics absolutely correct!  Our choice.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Meat Sacrificed to Idols, Inadvertent Shepherds and The Harsher Judgment

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Groupsby Standerinfamilycourt

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.   Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.   Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake;  for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.  If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.   But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake;  I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?   If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks?

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.   Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;   just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved.
–  1 Corinthians 10:23-33

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
– Ephesians 5:16-33

“Standerinfamilycourt” has never been one to belong to dozens of social media sites and pages, being  extremely selective and purposeful about which ones merit THE LORD’S time which has been entrusted to advance the kingdom of God.    This balance of time is certainly going to look different from disciple to disciple, depending on the particular assignment we’ve been given in these last days.    The half-dozen sites SIFC has committed to membership in generally serve these main purposes, consistent with kingdom assignment:

(1) plug into high-quality  scholarship of others so that 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall and Unilateral Divorce Is Unconstitutional can be as reliable as possible in dividing God’s word (and on the flip side, promote respectful avoidance of misusing the word of God)

(2) provide a trustworthy connection point to refer opposite-sex individuals who contact our pages seeking to be ministered to deeply — which should be done by a same sex person who is spiritually mature.

(3)  extend the reach and circulation of our posts  so that the stander community is aware of, and connected with, other voices and communities who are our natural allies in the righteous, interdependent quest to abolish unilateral divorce and clean up the apostate churches to the extent possible.

(4) keep tabs on what satan is up to these days in opposing God’s kingdom.  He loves to send in intruders and hang out on standers’ pages, too, while constantly shifting his ugly tactics.

Many covenant marriage standers will belong to an astounding number of sites and seem to be online “contending for the faith” all day and night.    Knowing firsthand how addictive social media is, especially to isolated and often-alienated standers, one has to wonder how much time is being truly spent in intercession for the rebuilding of our torn up families, pleading with the throne of heaven for the soul of our estranged one-flesh partners, and praying protective hedges around our impacted loved ones, especially given satan’s particular rage against us.      Not a few in the marriage permanence community, if they were completely honest with themselves and others,  have seemingly given up expecting the Lord to restore their holy matrimony union (if they haven’t instead come out of an unholy matrimony union).    Some, wrongly in my view, see Paul’s instructions in 1 Cor. 7:11,
“remain unmarried [celibate] or be reconciled…”
as “either / or” instead of “both / and”, and this is reflected in how they spend their time and emotional energy.     I pray that the Lord will greatly surprise these folks one day.    

A well-run site for covenant marriage standers (and for others with hearts open to the truth of marriage indissolubility), will have ground rules that look something like this:
– this is not a dating site
– name-calling, gossip, personal attacks and bad language will not be tolerated here
– off-topic posts and those pushing divisive, controversial ideologies not essential to inheriting the kingdom of God will not be allowed in our space, nor will debate on them be permitted
– promotional posts for unrelated ministries, products, etc. will be removed as spam

It is not typical at the present time for most pages which are geared to a doctrinally pure, continuously-maturing covenant marriage stander or repenting prodigal membership, to have more than a few hundred members or followers, nor rapid net growth (joiners far exceeding the unjoiners).  Yet when one gives this reality some reflection, such small following is still equivalent to a small-to-medium-sized church congregation.    Given the other reality that in a lot of cases, a particular site may become the church-surrogate for an unfortunate number of standers, the integrity and consistency with which the rules are applied takes on a sobering importance.    Everyone in this marriage permanence community has recently had a front row seat for the sad spectacle of what happened under the cronyism, carnality and lack of accountability in Greg Locke’s brick-and-mortar church.     Though virtual fellowship is not typically a matter of financial stewardship, the situation might not be too different in some of the stander sites in many other important respects, complete with defecting sheep who fall into carnality because the responsibility for discipling  the members wasn’t quite what it should have been in some sites where the defectors were hanging out.    When a standers’ site is growing at megachurch pace, it doesn’t hurt to take an objective look at what might be driving that aberrant pace and be a bit wary of failure to consistently apply the site’s own rules.

SIFC joined a fast-growing page recently that seemed to be well-run, at least as it appeared from the outside.   Its owner is an organizer of weekly conference calls of very high quality, good attendance, and excellent guests.     The live streaming of these calls had just become available on that site, with convenient playback.   Despite misgivings some months  earlier about the pushiness of the owner in posting the call notices on several restricted-topic sites and being rather obstinate about respecting those owners’ reasonable requests not to do so,  SIFC began to join these conference calls on a fairly regular basis due to the quality of the speakers.    Site membership had grown to about 1300 with a dozen or so new joiners weekly to site membership.    At first it appeared this site would nicely meet all three of SIFC’s top desired purposes for joining, as described earlier, and for committing to being a contributing member of a helpful standers’ group.    Some of the handful of soundly-based groups that had been fruitful a year or two ago had since gone fairly inactive, so the time seemed ripe.

After two or three weeks’ participation, SIFC has come away feeling as if comments in response to some of the posts had invited everyone there to a dinner party where, unknowingly, there had been served meat sacrificed to idols, which offended some guests of weaker faith.     Let me explain.

At the time point of joining, there was quite the conversation ongoing on about a male stander who had fallen prey to a heretical remarriage apology page, but had simultaneously been a member of this particular group, from which he evidently pursued several female standers (as confessed by one of them) before selecting a another stander to “marry” while his covenant wife remains a living prodigal.     To-date, two of our blog own posts have early-flagged and discussed the role of this man’s profuse legalistic ideologies which directly contributed to his moral fall, and (likely) to the ongoing depth of estrangement from his true wife.

Against this unfortunate backdrop, it was incredibly disheartening to see  legalistic and dogmatic posts by one of the page’s moderators in the next two weeks on all of the following off-topic issues that drew contentious debate:
– the  alleged”corruption” of attending a flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar church that has an appointed pastor or pastoral staff
– the alleged “pagan-ness” of Valentine’s Day celebrations
–  the alleged “impropriety” of addressing anyone, great or small, by a title

This appeared to be the only type of post ever observed being made by this gentleman in that time frame.   Not only were the moderator-poster’s extrabiblical biases being promoted, but anyone not practicing them was being overtly condemned.    SIFC’s first appeal to observe the site’s own posted rules was made to the owner in a comment on the post.  The site owner publicly commented that he agreed with the legalism complained of, and would therefore allow the posts to remain for the heated and unseemly discussion that ensued.   SIFC challenged the moderator-poster on all three of the above distractions, a man whose “story” hadn’t been revealed in SIFC’s short sojourn on the site, but his faith background can likely be guessed from the ethnicity of his name and the apparent appeal to him of these particular dogmas.    One of SIFC’s challenges was quickly deleted by somebody with access to do so, and SIFC received two PM’s from the site owner claiming that the dissenting comments constituted “name-calling”.  (Apparently because SIFC used the “L-word” as a descriptor).    In a display of spiritual maturity, this  fellow removed himself for a morning from the page membership, then the next thing SIFC knew, the page was “no longer available”.    Not only was I removed, but evidently also blocked from the page.

This site had all of the ground rules described above in place, and then some, as follows:

“This is NOT a dating site. There is ZERO tolerance for name calling, gossip, slander or profanity. If you do not answer questions, you will be ignored, and you and your posts may be deleted. Posts of false doctrines or false teachers will be deleted. This is not a debate forum. Keep posts focused on [marriage, adultery, divorce and remarriage].
DO NOT POST VIDEOS BY UNAPPROVED SPEAKERS. APPROVED SPEAKERS HAVE THEIR WEB SITES LISTED AND/OR ARE MODERATORS. VIDEOS SHOULD BE APPROVED PRIVATELY BY A MODERATOR PRIOR TO POSTING ON [site name].
(Examples: types of baptisms, tongues, women head coverings, dress or other topics that Christians have been divided on hundreds of years) Not a place to advertise your business. Violators and their posts will be deleted without warning.”

These were indeed enforced against infractions committed by non-cronies of the page owner, as SIFC observed on one occasion when a lady was admonished, not for a post but for a question she raised about a legalistic and divisive doctrine.     On the other hand, outright slander against a very effective and godly pioneering marriage restoration ministry was actively defended by the site owner when interjected by another commenter, interfering as she was with help SIFC was attempting to provide to a new member in the crisis of his wife leaving him.    Nope, this site is clearly not safe for referrals from Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional as originally hoped.    

Reflecting on this incident in its aftermath, several thoughts come to the surface that (at least in SIFC’s estimation) if heeded will help keep the looney-tunes “cult” perception, not to mention actual stander defections from biblical morality, at bay so that the marriage permanence community as a whole will be taken seriously by people who can potentially help us make a difference for families, a goal I’m certain this site owner shares.

Many years ago, SIFC and spouse were trained in our charismatic, nondenominational church, which practiced a plurality of pastoral leadership as modeled by the 1st century church,  into a 13-week course for house church leaders called “The Maturity in Christ Series”.  We  weren’t very chronologically mature at this time in the early ’80’s, but we then went on to teach this course together to new leaders a couple of times after that, while we co-led a house church with a seasoned couple who were both bible college grads.   Without denominational leadership and sound doctrine, the atmosphere was ripe for every kind of lunacy to be tracked in from outside, and indeed, we observed much during this time that was successfully resisted by the framework that the leadership had proactively established and the careful grooming and monitoring of the lay leadership.     On one occasion, there was an administration of (Matthew 18:15-17) public church discipline to a male house church leader who had become romantically involved with a troubled female in his charge.   This man was put out of the church for refusing to terminate the immoral, extramarital relationship.

In those days, marriage permanence was preached from the pulpit of that church.   Unlike the affluent Methodist church downtown, the number of remarried divorced pairs could be counted on the fingers of one hand.    The typical dogmas and distractions that regularly surfaced were very similar to today’s virtual communities of believers:  dress and makeup legalisms, Sabbath disputes, head coverings, holiday observance,  homeschooling, women working outside the home being likened to “streetwalkers”,  legalism about pursuing college at a secular institution, order in using the gifts of the Spirit, and so forth.    Similar to our virtual communities, people were being born again after spending their upbringing in churches with autocratic authority structures and some clearly pagan or extrabiblical practices, and these folks tended to backlash in the opposite direction of whatever they have grown up with until a period of responsible small group discipleship had brought them into better balance.

But what happens when a stander or repenting prodigal is persecuted in their traditional church, or even worse, put out of it for being outspoken about remarriage adultery being a hellbound sin?     The discipling processes can be short-circuited in some cases before a person has matured spiritually.      They can easily become distrustful of all traditional churches, due to the widespread apostasy over the remarriage issue, and assume all pastors are incorrigible and all churches apostate.   However, it doesn’t stop there.   Instead of becoming spiritually secure individuals, it becomes necessary to disparage and accuse anyone who is attending an actual church and attempting to influence their pastor toward scriptural faithfulness.   This was indeed the tone taken in one of the posts by the page moderator, who appears from this behavior to have come out of a faith tradition where church leadership is deemed “infallible” and not to be challenged.    Only, who’s there and qualified to disciple him in the virtual church?  Who’s properly trained and willing to do so?    Only somebody who can see (or has seen) where the man’s error is taking him!

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
– 1 Corinthians 15:33

There’s a key reason why SIFC opted for an open community page instead of a closed group – lack of time and biblical qualification to act as a de facto pastor.    There are just over 600 self-elected followers to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, none of whom are very likely to mistake the page for a suitable church substitute.
(By contrast, a community page started four years earlier, similarly targeted as ours, but which doesn’t call non-covenant “marriages” adultery, doesn’t seek to reform the laws, and doesn’t write about things like hell, toxic Calvinism, and the corruption of our contemporary bibles, has eight times as many page fans.)   Even so, ministry, prayer and referral (as appropriate) takes place behind the scenes upon request on UDIU, and there is a comfortable margin of time for this to occur with good handling while maintaining the page, and while assisting on a couple of other pages.   People don’t (normally) get insulted, protest loudly and huff off on our page — which I’d say is good for public decorum.    They simply “unlike” and “re-like” our page.

Were there 1300 group members to deal with, coming and going through a page-owned gatekeeping process, that’s equivalent to a fairly large church, and maintaining this administratively pretty much requires a staff, as indeed this page has appointed its moderators.  The site owner told me he works the page himself an average of eight hours a day.

An overseer, then, must be…. and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
– Timothy 3:7

Page owners in the marriage permanence arena must understand that their page is a pseudo-church (unless the following is very small or unless they regularly and sincerely urge participation in a real church or house church fellowship wherever possible), and they must understand that the shared leadership of that page are indeed pseudo-pastors, at least to a portion of their members.     Is this page owner therefore willing to qualify these folks serving as his moderators according to Paul’s guidelines in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1?   If not, what unction do they really have for criticizing the qualifications of a non-widowed remarried pastor?  If they don’t consistently “police” the lunacies and heresies surfacing on their page, are they any better than Paul found the Corinthian church to be when he rebuked the leadership for tolerating similar lunacies and heresies in his first letter?  If they have defectors who lapse into immorality, is this not a potential sign of pastoral deficiency?

And what is their strategy for discipling and counseling the women in their virtual congregation?    There are one or two virtual marriage ministries that have addressed this issue thoughtfully and made effective provision for it.   At least one of the leaders of this particular page, however, claim there’s something wrong with a female Christ-follower if, deprived of the covering God expects from her absentee husband, she therefore decides to be under the covering of a traditional pastor.  Yet her critics on the page really don’t have anything superior to offer her in the alternative.    What then happens in the vacuum is (unfortunately) that some can be preyed upon by insiders and outsiders alike.

Here’s a quick reminder of a few of the substantial benefits someone who can’t or won’t attend a flesh-and-blood fellowship miss out on:
–  communion (the taking of which just might be felt by our absent one-flesh partner)
– anointing with oil when ill
– meals brought over when ill
– small helps in severe situations they are unable to do themselves
– opportunity for mission trips
– opportunity to mentor young people

Surely, the Lord would not have His sheep criticized in this fashion for being a part of a congregation that provides things which He clearly intended for us to have that the alternative gatherings, real or virtual, can’t necessarily provide?    I think of an isolated late middle-aged woman who died alone in her house in our neighborhood several years ago who wasn’t even discovered until a part of her roof fell in due to heavy snow, and whose out-of-state children then had to be tracked down.    How incredibly sad, and  I’ve often wondered if she had been a stander.

Let’s face it:  we standers tend to be a mess emotionally, and long years of standing don’t normally make it any better.   These online groups tend to be a magnet additionally for wounded people who, for whatever reason, reject having spiritual authority over  them, who bristle at the idea of tithing (one legalism they do agree not to tolerate), and at other disciplines they shouldn’t be finding excuses to avoid.   Often this behavior and mindset is due to being raised in a church that was pompous in requiring the use of titles, and in declaring individual leaders “infallible” while promulgating the traditions of men that contradict the word of God.    Standers’ groups should be safe havens for those who have been involuntarily rejected or persecuted by their brick-and-mortar church.    But bad behavior that is harmful to the others on the group page should never have a safe haven.    Response to this behavior should follow a Matthew 18:15-17 process with no favoritism shown.     “Excommunications” should certainly follow this process, and should be done with correct motives which are soul-related.     “Excommunication” should never result from other members pouting at being admonished.

For the body is not one member, but many.   If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.  And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?   But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.    – Corinthians 12:14-18

Another thing typically happens in large, virtual pseudo-churches.   All of the usual functional and spiritual gifts have a tendency of showing up in the group’s members and manifesting in posts and comments on the page.    One of the key pieces of leadership training my honey and I received “way back when” was instruction in what some of these gifts look like in their actual exercise in a group, including both the strengths and the weaknesses of each kind of person so gifted.    However, many standers have always been taught some measure of cessationism, so this conversation could not even be had on this particular group page, according to the stated rules.    One is perfectly free on this page, therefore, to hyper-apply Matthew 23:1-12, according to the YouTube video of some self-appointed “theologian”, but God help anyone who dares exercise the gift of, say,  discerning of spirits in that group.    That “passed away” with the Apostles,  after all.  Unfortunately, satan doesn’t spare the marriages of charismatics any more than he does the marriages of the “Reformed” or the Baptists.    Pretending within a group of Christ-followers that the functional gifts don’t exist doesn’t make them “poof” go away.   God certainly knows that a body can’t function without a nervous system,  so chances are that an “excommunicated” nervous system just might grow back through another member.     Successful groups, flesh-and-blood or virtual, learn how to benefit from the functional gifts in an orderly fashion.

I do not share my written perspective on this to get back at the group, for if so, I would name them.   I also do not write this out of any desire to rejoin, based on what I so quickly learned about how its governance stacks up with my pre-contemplated desires for investment of time in such a group.   At best, rejoining would fulfill only objectives (3) and (4) – not good enough to compensate for the much greater downside, as it currently stands.   I will probably not repost this blog to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, because a portion of that diverse audience is best not exposed to petty squabbling and (actual) cultishness in the body of Christ.     I blush that the poor man who was a new joiner seeking help for a horrible family crisis was exposed to it that day, and can only pray he wasn’t so turned off that he won’t follow up on the good referrals he was given.    My main hope is that this post will trigger the marriage permanence community to reflect on what they hope to achieve from group membership, and for the many others administering marriage permanence pages to prayerfully gut-check their own priorities and objectives, responsibly considering some of the eternal implications for running their page.

Surely, making one’s own decision whether to be part of a traditional church or observe Valentines Day are both lawful, according to the Apostle Paul, and whether or not they are both profitable depends on the circumstances involved, which are not for a third party to judge in any event.    Similarly, Jesus did not forbid a disciple from voluntarily addressing someone by their title.   At least that was the interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas (addressing an angel sent to him in a dream):

““And I said to him, ‘Sir, if any one has a wife who trusts in the Lord, and if he detect her in adultery, does the man sin if he continues to live with her?’ And he said to me, ‘As long as he remains ignorant of her sin, the husband commits no transgression in living with her. But if the husband knows that his wife has gone astray, and if the woman does not repent, but persists in her sin, and yet the husband continues to live with her, he also is guilty of her crime, and a sharer in her adultery.’ And I said to him, ‘What then, sir, is the husband to do, if his wife continues in her vicious practices?’       (The Shepherd, Second Book, Commandment 4:1)

Rather, Jesus taught that it was presuming upon the glory of God to insist that others address us by such a title.  Someone of weaker faith might not see one of these issues as the scripture intended, and someone of the weakest possible faith will have issues of conscience over the shallowest reading of scripture or every suggestive, but ill-researched, teacher they encounter.    I humbly suggest that such folk are not yet ready to teach others if they elevate such things to a heaven-or-hell gravity.

My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.    –  James 3:1

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Are Millions REALLY Going to Hell for Remarriage Adultery? How Do We Know?

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Luke16
by Standerinfamilycourt

What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.   Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
–  Matthew 10:27-28

With permission, we’re sharing an “inbox” inquiry received on our Facebook community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional:

“Quick overview. Covenant wife divorced me early nineties. Stood approx. 4 years until Cov. wife became engaged. Starting dating..fell into sin..ended up marrying woman I impregnated 1 week before cov. wife was remarried. Tough second marriage. 3 year separation where I stood for the non covenant marriage and she did come home with another mans child. Fast foward 15 years and she left again. This time as reading the bible and studying the blinders came off. Now back to standing for covenant marriage altho cov wife seems to have had a very blessed marriage. Sometimes I think if I had married one week after I would have had a good marriage and hers would have been bad. The struggle I have is with how my covenant wife has seem to have been so blessed. Reading your blog there was an article where you had come to grips with remarriage being a hell or heaven matter. What was the information the settled the matter in your heart? You see so many people in remarriages that love God…works demonstrate their faith, etc. that it’s hard to believe that an eternity in hell awaits them. Your thoughts are appreciated.”

( FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC: Of course, we have addressed these recurring questions in many prior posts, such as this one,  and  this one, but we’re not surprised that the central question keeps popping up.)

Thanks for your question, Page Fan.   You raise many issues in your question, and the response can get lengthy in a hurry.  Since it’s a question many have, I’d like to give you a quick answer about the events that solidified the heaven-or-hell heart knowledge for “standerinfamilycourt”,  and give you a couple of resources to digest on your own.    Then, with your permission, and keeping your identity confidential, what I’d like to do is bring a fuller response to everyone through a blog post by the end of February.   May I ?

The first thing to understand is what Jesus was telling us in Matt.19:6 and 8.  Humanists, from Moses to the Pharisees, to Martin Luther to Pope Francis, have always rebelled against God’s order, which was established at creation, by trying to make the question of divorce and remarriage about allowances and “permissions”.
Jesus came along and said, “no, it’s strictly about metaphysics — to which there are no exceptions.”   This is what He’s saying in Matt. 19:6:  only God’s hand can form the lifelong one-flesh entity of holy matrimony.  He does it instantaneously and supernaturally, creating an entirely new entity, “they are never again two (according to the verb tense He actually used, translated into Greek) but one flesh.”   God then becomes the other party with that new entity to an unconditional covenant.  All of this occurs BEFORE physical consummation if the couple was chaste before taking vows.
Where they weren’t chaste, but there is no living, estranged spouse, it still occurs before they are back up the aisle and out the door.

This is the foundation that makes all non-widowed “remarriage” adultery, and is why Jesus repeated on three separate occasions that EVERYONE who “marries” a divorced woman enters into an ongoing state of adultery.   If it was adulterous for another man to “marry” YOUR covenant wife, it is equally adulterous for your one-flesh to claim to the world that she is “married” to that man, regardless of how “blessed” it might look from the outside.

I assure you, she knows that “hen soma” (satan’s glittery but pale counterfeit discussed in 1 Cor. 6:16) is a hollow substitute for “sarx mia” – the supernatural, God-joined genuine article.

Jesus was not just saying in Matt.19:6 and 8 (SIFC: notice the verb tense again in “it was not [EVER] this way”) that divorce was immoral — He was saying that man’s paper claims of “dissolution” were IMPOSSIBLE.   Only death severs the one-flesh entity, and only death removes God from the unconditional covenant He has made with that inseverable one-flesh entity.   To the divorced and remarried priest He addresses through the prophet Malachi (chapter 2), He says….” the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she IS (not “was”) your companion and your wife by covenant.”

I have always known from my earliest days as a believer that non-widowed remarriage was fake and adulterous, and this came by revelation of God’s direct word and the Holy Spirit’s counsel to me personally.   I stood strong against the rapidly-apostasizing church four decades ago based on that.   But even in those days, I only knew a fraction of what I was eventually to learn.    So here are the events that clarified things for me:

The first thing was that the pastor of my own church decided a few years ago to take many weeks to teach the entire congregation on Sundays how to use the principles of sound hermeneutics in bible study to detect and avoid error / “spin”.   He was so serious about it that he did this right from the pulpit in the main service.   He wasn’t teaching on marriage, just general principles.   I then read a 1957 book called “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?” written around the same kind of rigorous hermeneutic framework as I had just learned in church, written by a bible college president who died in 1975.

The second thing was the range of accomplished bible scholars I met shortly afterward.   Soon I met displaced pastors whose covenant wives had divorced them, but they had obeyed the Lord and remained celibate, some of them for 30 years who never had a church again after that, expressly because they refused to “remarry”. These guys (and in one case an accomplished lady bible scholar who had repented of an adulterous “remarriage” with another woman’s “divorced” husband), taught me how to use free online deep bible study tools to get back to the original Greek and Hebrew texts, which then exposed all of the places where liberal bible translation committees had distorted our English-language bibles over the past 100 years or so to make divorce and remarriage seem acceptable.  I then found out there were a handful of happily married pastors, in quite a mix of denominations, with congregations who agreed with these “divorced” pastors and preached the truth boldly from their own pulpits — all of the truth.   Being able to see the differences in Greek word usage that the liberal commentators don’t tell people about, helped me deeply understand the nature of both one-flesh and God’s unconditional covenants, as well as His character in how He treats His holy symbols.

Once I had this hermeneutics and online tools methodology under my belt, I happened to be accepted as a FB friend by a prominent professor (former Catholic) in a mainline Protestant seminary who had become an early friend of our FB page, and who had once rebutted Dr. David Instone-Brewer’s erroneous and liberal book from 2001.   Dr. G allowed me to post marriage indissolubility comments on his wall, which is a gathering-place for Christian leaders and students, but he became uncomfortable and PM’d me one evening when I posted evidence that it’s a heaven-or-hell issue, just as remaining in a sodomous relationship is for gays who claim to be believers.

Dr. G: ”  [SIFC}, I think you are beginning to dominate the discussion on my divorce post overly much. I think people understand your point. Some of it is helpful but careful for overkill.”

SIFC:  “Good evening, Dr. G. Sorry I’ve offended. I’m in the middle of finishing a blog, so will give it a rest, and I do appreciate the touch-base. I do have a question, if it’s something you’ve addressed before. In your mind, is there any difference between “not inheriting the kingdom of God” and going to hell?   This is a serious question and would love to have your input some time. Thanks.”

Dr. G:  “Not inheriting the kingdom of God means exclusion from eternal life.”

SIFC:   “So I guess your response would be “no difference”?”

Bottom line, he readily admitted that they mean the same thing, and has continued to allow me to post the same kinds of comments ever since.    (The other possibility might have been for him to cite “loss of rewards”, as some of the Calvinists do with regard to the born-again who disobey the Lord in this area, but he didn’t do so.)

By that  late evening incident in 2015, I knew that it wasn’t wrong to link 1 Cor.6:9-10  with Luke 16:18, since after all, Jesus Himself did so in verses 19-31 of Luke 16.   Notice He also does so in Matthew 5:27-32, keeping in mind that when those words came out of His mouth, there was no bible committee to sanitize it by adding “helpful headings” and “suggested divisions”.     (Dr. G still claims there is adultery and “adultery-lite” depending on whether or not there’s man’s paper involved, but this learned seminarian has never been able to point to any scripture that supports this, except for the (irrelevant) story of the woman shacking up with a non-husband,  of whom John’s account doesn’t tell us Jesus told her she had to “come out of”  – but neither does John’s account tell us that He told her to hie herself off to the rabbi and “marry” the dude, post-haste.)
Dr. G is similar to John Piper and Voddie Baucham, good men who all agree that “remarriage” is adultery before it actually happens, but who all object, without scriptural basis, to the idea that repenting of this ongoing sin is done the same way as repenting of any other ongoing state of sin.

The third thing that happened is that I was exposed to all of the writings of the early church leaders, from the Apostles – people who had been in the house with Jesus after His confrontation with the Pharisees about remarriage being adultery, where He spoke of becoming a “eunuch” for the sake of inheriting the kingdom of God – to the ones that lived some 300 or 400 years later. They were unanimous about it as well. Even if some of them did consider man’s “divorce” real in terms of a separation, they all knew it didn’t dissolve anything until somebody died, so they all unanimously forbid remarriage while an estranged spouse was still alive.
One of them, Ignatius, who was the bishop of Antioch (died when executed by the Romans in a den of lions) said this around 100 A.D. :

“Do not be in error, my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If then, those who do this as respects the flesh have suffered death, how much more shall this be the case with anyone who corrupts by wicked doctrine the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified? Such a one becoming defiled in this way shall go away into everlasting fire, and so shall everyone that harkens unto him.”

This audio link with important church history details is by Rev. Stephen Wilcox – whom I also highly recommend to you as a contact. Stephen runs the Spirit of Hosea Fellowship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhhGSHJAef4

We have to understand that remarriage adultery doesn’t just break the commandment against adultery. It also breaks the 1st commandment against idolatry (finding God-substitutes / self-worship), and the 8th, 9th and 10th commandments (stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting that which belongs to another).
If we die in the ongoing sin of remarriage adultery we die in all of those other sins as well, and we know from Rev. 21:8 that unrepentant liars and covetous idolators are cast into the lake of fire.   Ditto for living in an ongoing state of unforgiveness which Jesus repeatedly stated will send people to hell if they die in that state (see Matt. 18:23-35).   Adulterous remarriage constitutes permanent unforgiveness, taking our own revenge, as well as idolatry, covetousness, theft and sexual immorality.

MarriageHeresy

If we stand for our covenant marriage, our motivation has to be right — we have to dread the idea of our God-joined one-flesh being cast into the lake of fire so much that we are determined to go the distance in what will seem like endless deprivation.  We have to dread the idea that our children and grandchildren are likely to emulate our example of something that could send them to hell, unless they have the chance to observe us drawing a durable moral line in the sand.    Above all, we can’t presume to give the Ruler of All Heaven and Earth a selfish time limit before we go and jeopardize yet another person’s soul by purporting to “marry” them when we are already joined for life in holy matrimony by GOD.

There’s much I can say about the appearance that your wife is “blessed” while “married” to somebody Jesus repeatedly called an adulterer.   To gain some perspective, I suggest you read all of Luke, chapter 16;  think deeply about everything Jesus was saying in that rich chapter and how it all ties together.  The part about unrighteous mammon (following the world system), about John the Baptist who was beheaded for warning a pair of remarriage adulterers to repent or face hell and what Jesus thought about that, and finally the story of the rich man and Lazarus, thinking about how that relates to your exclusive one-flesh and the counterfeit she is “married” to.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.   –  Matthew 5:44-45

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.  – Galatians 6:7-8

(FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC: When we sow peas, we don’t reap corn.   We usually reap much later than we sow, and normally, we reap much more than we sow.   When the covenant wife “divorces” her husband, she takes herself out of the God-ordained covering-and-authority structure that includes her God-joined husband with God over him, which is also planting a “seed”, of sorts.  That act [unrepented], too, is a “work” that is demonstrating her “faith”, is it not?   God’s mercy toward her may be because she was never taught any better, but we cannot say.)

And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?   No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”   Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.”     –  Luke 16:12-15

In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and *saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.   And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’  But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.   –  Luke 16:23-25

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”   –  Matthew 7:13-14

Truly, I say to you, “they have their reward in full.”  – Matthew 6: 2, 5, and 16

Finally, Page Fan, do remember that God joins and honors valid mixed and pagan marriages as indissoluble, equally as He does “Christian” marriages.   However, if anyone in this scenario is unsaved, not born again, remarriage adultery won’t be the primary reason they wind up in hell.   Nobody can afford to put the cart before the horse.   I hope you will recognize these women in your life, and all the children, as souls first who need Jesus more than anything else.

Blessings, Page Fan, and I hope this helps.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Put Your Wedding Ring Back On and Get a Job, Greg Locke!

11 Comments

GLocke_PutUrWeddingRingBackOn
by Standerinfamilycourt

 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.   He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?),  and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.   And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.   –  1 Timothy 3:2-7

J D Hall of Pulpit and Pen broke a tragic revelation* last week, which the rest of the media quickly grabbed up in their own headlines.   Satan had brought down yet another high-profile evangelical pastor, using  head-slander against his own one-flesh wife and the allure of another man’s wife.     Satan had successfully attacked not just one, but two covenant families– and a church congregation in the process.
(*Small silver lining:   J D Hall “gets it” when it comes to the perverse relationship between “family courts” and the evangelical churches, and doesn’t mind using his microphone to enlighten his evangelical listeners.   Don’t miss the excellent listening between 8:38 and 10:08 minutes into the linked Pulpit & Pen podcast, January 12, 2018 about the dissipated moral authority of the church which prefaces the description of Hall’s phone conversations with Locke.)

The social media report last week was, that outspoken (some would say, angry-spirited)  neo-conservative Pastor Greg Locke had accused his wife of 20 years of being mentally-ill,  had filed for divorce and had sent her away on a bus without their two natural and two adopted children, who will be in the joint custody of himself and his mother.     Further, he had recently installed his wife Melissa’s “best friend” as an administrative assistant at  Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee (suburb of populous and affluent Nashville) which Locke founded in 2006, and Locke was allegedly dating this woman who had also filed a recent divorce petition against her own husband.

(from the church website staff page, 1/17/2018)
GLockeOW 1.17.18

If this scenario is beginning to sound like deja vu to the readers, there’s good reason it does.   The Locke cult-following (some even within the circle of covenant marriage standers) were indignant, unable to believe it could possibly be true, and were chiding the re-posted reports as “shameful gossip”.    Meanwhile, many standers who have been down this infidelity road with their own spouse were finding it hard to overlook all of the telltale signs in this sorry story, and the familiar narcissism in Locke’s video statement from January 11, (which Locke has apparently had the common sense to take down in the days since he posted it).    Evidently, the podcast link in the first paragraph above is the only place to get back to at least the Pulpit & Pen audio of the video that was taken down this week from Locke’s public figure facebook page, the relevant portion starting at approx. 17:30 minutes.

Locke, of course, fancied that “damage-control” was possible (and probably necessary) with his 1 million+ facebook following,  so he posted this  now-removed video to his  wall late last Thursday, implying that his wife (not he) had filed the divorce, while giving various conflicting time frames for her departure.    He blamed his “haters” and in a tearful plea, insisted “I’m not an adulterer.”   Not even in his heart, apparently.   He said his church was “fully aware” of his relationship with the other woman (we suppose so, since they had “agreed” to put her on staff), and said the church was “walking beside him” in his “brokenness” (as opposed to taking the biblical step of asking Locke to step away from ministry for the season needed to attend to his family).     According to the podcast audio recounting Hall’s very  recent phone interview with Locke,  Pulpit & Pen challenged Locke’s  statement that the divorce was final, as Locke strongly implied in the video.    It is very disturbing indeed that Locke tearfully concluded the now-removed video as follows (approximately 26:30):

“I told them [his GVBC congregation], ‘I’ve gotta move forward with MY kids, and with MY life’….and people are, like, are you going to reconcile, are you going to work on it?   Do you understand if you’ve ever been divorced, that divorce is the finality of what you’ve been working on.  It’s not the beginning  and the cause of it.”   – Locke, January 11, 2018

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.   – Matthew 19:8

A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
– 1 Cor. 7:39

Approximately 23:25 into the Pulpit & Pen podcast, there is discussion of the counsel Greg Locke said (to J D Hall and Locke’s facebook audience) that he had sought from Charles Stanley’s ministry in Atlanta, GA.    Stanley’s wife Anna (deceased since 2014) obtained a civil divorce from Charles in 2000 after 42 years of marriage, and about seven years of legal separation.    Unlike Greg Locke, Stanley is accountable to a church board, and Stanley’s church board voted that he not step down so long as Stanley remains unmarried (per the biblical instruction in 1 Cor. 7:11).   To-date, there has been no evidence at all that Stanley has not done so.   Presumably, he has also honored the Lord by remaining celibate.

In other words, unlike Greg Locke, Charles Stanley is a covenant marriage “stander”, and unlike Greg Locke, Charles Stanley is now eligible to remarry if the Lord should so lead. “Standerinfamilycourt” takes exception, in this age of unilateral divorce, to the notion that a celibate, standing pastor whose children are grown and gone, raised orderly, should step down.    (SIFC has full respect for those who reasonably disagree on the basis that such a pastor failed to properly care for his wife according to Ephesian 5.)   In our humble opinion, at any rate, the board of First Baptist Church in Atlanta seems to have handled Mrs. Stanley’s prodigal departure in a way the Apostle Paul would have approved.

By contrast,  Locke’s Global Vision Bible Church is independent, and similar to the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) denominational background Locke first pastored in before founding his present church, there appears to be no church board to be accountable to, according to our search of the church’s website.     Any comparison Locke makes of himself with Charles Stanley is totally spurious, therefore.   According to accounts that various church members gave to J D Hall,  Locke issued an ultimatum one autumn 2017 Sunday to his congregation (last 15 minutes of the link) after Melissa’s departure, and he has no intention of stepping back or stepping down, despite the fact that his young family is not well-governed as the qualification scripture for pastors (1 Timothy 3:2-7) requires.   If he “marries”  the adulteress Tai McGee to keep his position, he will no longer be “the husband of one wife”.      All of the above is the classic scenario of how so many legalized adulterers come to replace chaste, biblically-qualified pastors behind our evangelical pulpits in the harlot church.     Is there any wonder why God’s judgment is falling so heavily on His church?

Another pastor,  Stephen Anderson, of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ  (another Independent Fundamental Baptist church, denominational membership, about 8 million)  is a marriage permanence pastor who has done videos criticizing fallen, high-profile pastors who refuse to repent from their adultery and also refuse to step down from ministry,  most notably Kent Hovind, whose adulterous remarriage in early 2016 to divorcee Mary Trocco is already in divorce proceedings (mercifully).  In this video, Anderson echoes what Hall said about pastor qualifications, and the need for Locke to step down.

SAnderson_reLocke

Anderson had been critical of Locke in an early 2016 video for a reason we don’t concur with,  namely Locke’s backing away from the extreme Calvinist doctrine, “once saved, always saved” in Global Vision’s doctrine statement.   Our position on the nature of justification and sanctification can be read here, and also here.    Anderson goes so far as to question whether Locke has had a genuine born-again experience, due to this theology difference and Locke’s public persona,  which we probably should not be judging until Mr. Locke has had an opportunity to “finish the race”, though we know the evangelical church in general is full of false converts.   The theological criticism and Anderson’s questioning  of the social media / political route Locke took to gather his following all arose before there were indications of marriage problems between the Lockes.     Although we disagree with that aspect of Anderson’s criticism,  his biblical observations about putting away Melissa, taking up with another man’s wife, and the condition of Locke’s family calling for him to step away from ministry at this time are all spot-on, echoing J D Hall.

In looking at accounts of Locke’s upbringing,  divorce and adulterous remarriage is an unresolved generational issue in his family, and the trademark angry spirit with which Locke tears into liberals and the gay community, he apparently came by as a result of the divorce and remarriage-related family strife in his young years.   Locke’s mother “divorced” his father after her true husband was sent to prison, and “married” another man when Locke was only five years old.   Understandably, this usurper and his “step-son” did not get along. Before his conversion experience outside the family, Locke had various brushes with the law.   But nobody ever went back and taught Locke that his mother’s soul was endangered because she was living in ongoing adultery, or that this “stepfather” was an immoral fixture in his childhood home.   Perhaps if this had occurred, it would have helped dissipate some of the anger and self-focus that it’s clear he carried over into his “ministry”.   The wicked example of unrebuked remarriage adultery is almost always self-perpetuating in the next generation.    Whatever “standing” Locke felt like he had done for his own allegedly difficult marriage,

“divorce is the finality of what you’ve been working on.  It’s not the beginning  and the cause of it.”

…before looking around to replace his wife and “move forward” with “HIS” kids and “HIS” life, is likely to have been done out of a legalistic spirit, if the holy concepts of supernatural inseverable one-flesh (sarx mia) and unconditional covenant have never been biblically explained to him.    This kind of an upbringing which normalizes Christ-defined immorality even in church also tends to lead to narcissism, feeling “owed” by God,  out of the sharp sense of deprivation that years spent in an immoral home can foster in the heart of a kid who wasn’t properly discipled after coming to faith.   Somebody in that family needs to draw the kingdom line with the devil!

A visit to the website of Global Vision Bible Church describe an element of the church’s “DNA” as “Loud where God is loud and silent where God is silent.”   What an ironic statement for the (reputed) LGBT(xyz) community’s “worst nightmare”!   Jesus didn’t feel the need to say much of anything for that which was no threat to the Jews or Gentiles of the 1st century, but repeatedly forbid and warned against precisely what Locke is in the process of doing now, and for which he is apparently receiving no discipline, or even rebuke, at all from the other leadership of that church.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.   You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.   In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,  I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, SO THAT HIS SPIRIT MAY BE SAVED in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?  Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.  Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;   I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.   But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—NOT TO EVEN EAT WITH SUCH A ONE.   For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Do you not judge those who are within the church?  But those who are outside, God judges.  Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
– 1 Corinthians 5

Who remembers the Ashley Madison scandal from 2015 that rocked more than 400 U.S. evangelical pastors exposed in that scandal– for who they are, when they think no one is watching?  From the mouth of one who’s so “important” that he doesn’t feel it matters who is watching:

GLockeAMadison video

SIFC (1/30/2018) –  Sorry folks, it seems Locke has taken this video down as well since publication of this blog post.   It was priceless, as one can just imagine.

Even if Locke is not yet sleeping with this woman until he can obtain the sham civil and church paperwork (doubtful, since his judgment is already so clouded), are there any obvious and recorded signs of this man being a reviler?  Or covetous?    As King David was sent a prophet named Nathan a year or more after his illicit wedding to Bathsheba, to tell him “you are the man!” he was not allowed by God to use his empire and an unlawful “marriage” to cover up his sin, neither will Greg Locke.

Since Locke independently established his non-denominational church, it is likely he personally wrote the Statement of Beliefs for that church, with only limited input or external ratification.   These are brief, and they read as follows:

“WHAT WE BELIEVE (GLOBAL VISION BIBLE CHURCH):

  1. We believe the Bible is the perfect Word of God. It is without error from beginning to end. The Bible is our sole Authority for faith and practice. (2 Tim 3:13-17)
  2. We believe that salvation is provided by Jesus Christ and Him alone. It is through his death, burial and resurrection that men are saved from sin. It is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin. Works and religion cannot save in anyway. The Gospel is the power of God unto Salvation. Furthermore, we believe that Christ died for all men and upon the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the REPENTANCE OF THE HEART and the confession of the mouth men are Born-Again of God’s Spirit. (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 15:1-4, Eph 2:8-9)
  3. We believe in the eternal salvation of all believers. Once a person trusts in Christ, they are forever kept by the power of God and CAN NEVER BE LOST.   Salvation is truly everlasting life. However, those who have trusted Christ are His and will obey Him and His Word. We do not believe a person can live any way they so desire and be saved. The Bible DOGMATICALLY DECLARES that a person will be a new creature in Christ. (2 Cor 5:17, Jn 10:27-30)
  4. We believe in the Bible doctrine of the Trinity. We believe in one God, co-existing in three persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is the father who planned our salvation, his Son Jesus who provided our forgiveness and the Spirit of God who SEALS OUR STATE before God. Furthermore, at the moment of SALVATION we receive all of God’s Spirit. We do not get more of God, rather we must surrender more of ourselves to him on a daily basis. (1 Jn 5:7)
  5. We believe that the local New Testament Church is God’s ordained institution. It is through individual bodies of believers that the Great Commission is carried on throughout the world. (Acts 2:41-47, Matt 28:18-20)”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “Standerinfamilycourt” has highlighted some phrases in three of these GVBC tenets that could be contributing to Greg Locke’s spiritual confusion, and therefore, could be specifically leading him down the wrong path.   The joke, in places like Tennessee, is that if you’re an evangelical, you’re going to be a Baptist (therefore, a Calvinist) — it’s just a matter of which of the 57 varieties of Baptist (Southern, Freewill, Regular, Fundamental, etc., etc.) one chooses.  Hence, we have an Independent Fundamental Baptist taking to YouTube to rebuke an nondemoninational independent Baptist over the degree of toxic Calvinism practiced (i.e. who has the worst “salvation by works” doctrine in the other’s eyes).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (1) “Repentance of the heart” is not repentance at all unless the feet are doing a physical U-turn at the same time.    People in this mindset confuse “salvation” with either sanctification or justification, and dismissively label obedience to Christ’s commandments “salvation by works” or “legalism”.     New Testament scripture makes it clear that we can fall away, even with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, if we persistently and habitually choose not to obey the commandments of Christ.    We are warned in the book of Hebrews that this process hardens a believer’s heart, and that there is a point of no-return once the Holy Spirit becomes so grieved and quenched that He cannot do His convicting work in us any longer.    Toxic Calvinists will claim that this constitutes, “not being born again to begin with” (as Anderson does toward Locke).    Anderson may legitimately do so only if he can conclusively demonstrate that the wandering soul in question was never indwelt with the Holy Spirit.    This is a tall order for we humans who lack omniscience.    If we know a person well and we are Spirit-filled, we only know the point at which the Holy Spirit did indwell someone else, from the degree of transformation in their life and consistent heart attitudes thereafter for a long season.    We have no way of knowing  conclusively that He did not indwell someone specific at some point, unless perhaps it’s one of our functional gifts.   Unfortunately, the first person someone with the spirit of adultery (a self-worshipper) lies to is himself or herself, and equally unfortunately, “repentance in the heart” can be premediated in Calvinist environments because of the “once-saved, always saved” (OSAS) heresy.   This is mocking God, which Paul repeatedly warns cannot be done without eternal consequences if not genuinely (and physically) repented.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (2) “Dogmatically declares”  (that a person will be a new creation in Christ) pretends that our free will “goes away” and will no longer be exercised.    God has endless ways to persuade us from our free will before it destroys our eternity, but unfortunately, He doesn’t ever override it.   We indeed are a new creation in Christ from the moment we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, but it’s an error to claim we will never backslide.    We should know this instinctively from the experience of the believers who surround us.     The fact that we are no longer able to be controlled by sin does not mean for a moment that we are prevented from willfully resubmitting ourselves to that control at a later point.    Someone deceived with a spirit of adultery who genuinely believes he and his intended adultery partner are born again very commonly reasons that,“since I am doing this, and God is ‘blessing’ it, it must be His will, otherwise the Holy Spirit (Who is, in reality, both grieved and quenched) would not allow it.   I must have not been doing God’s will in my marriage, since that wasn’t so blessed.”One  can just imagine how tempting this reasoning is if Greg’s characterization of Melissa being mentally ill is true.   If there’s a way to lay down one’s cross that men will allow other men to get away with, it becomes very hard to resist.   The IBF denomination Locke formerly belonged to teaches strongly against divorce and remarriage, but does so legalistically, with the Calvinistic spectre of “not being born again to begin with” hanging over a prodigal’s head.     Contrast this legalistic obedience with what the Church Father, Origen said:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               “If we love this neighbor, we are fulfilling the entire law and all the commandments by his love.
    “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.
    ” It is absolutely impossible for one who loves Christ with his whole heart and with all his inner being to do anything displeasing to Christ.
    “For the one who loves him not only does not commit murder, which is prohibited by the law, but he does not become angry with his brother because he whom he loves takes delight in this.
    “And not only does he not commit adultery, but he does not look at a woman in order to desire her. But instead he says to him, “My soul desires and faints for the living God.
    ”When would one who loves Christ, who has even abandoned everything he owns to follow Christ, think about stealing [someone else’s one-flesh]?
    “On what occasion does the one who loves Christ bear false testimony, when he knows that the one he loves was betrayed by false testimony? 
    “He who loves Christ inevitably loves his neighbor [including his one-flesh] as well. For a disciple is marked as belonging to Christ by this proof alone, if he loves his neighbors. For it is certain that he who does not love his neighbor does not know Christ.
    –Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.
    640px-Origen
    Someone who believes that “salvation” cannot be lost, regardless of whether they make choices that evade their ongoing sanctification (obtaining the wedding garments and the oiled lamp needed for admission to the future marriage supper),  can easily rationalize that  God will “grade them on a curve”, come Judgment Day, and in fact, they will only have their “rewards” reduced (1 Cor 3:11-15).    Hence, for the same reason, they don’t feel it’s necessary to exclude legalized adulterers from their pews and church coffers, they feel “their right to be happy” in this life is worth the gamble they’ve taken with the Most High.                                                                                                                                                                                                  (3)  The Spirit of God “Seals our state” and Holy Spirit indwells upon “salvation“.      Examined closely, these two statements are mutually exclusive due to timing factors.   The Holy Spirit indwells, as a deposit (not a guarantee, as one unfortunate translation renders it)  upon our justification.    Our salvation is not complete and conferred until we arrive and are admitted to the marriage supper of the Lamb.    See How Good is the Pledge of Being Sealed?  for the detailed hermeneutic support for this doctrine correction.     The effect of this error on a Greg Locke-style prodigal is a combination of the two deceits discussed in (1) and (2).    The reference in (2) that “We do not believe a person can live any way they so desire and be saved” (limited to drinking, smoking, dipping, chewing, dancing, fist-fighting, sodomizing, tongues-speaking, cussing, sleeping with someone else’s wife without the proper paperwork) most likely refers to someone who “was never saved to begin with”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Greg Locke has a searchable sermon file, as many Baptist pastors do,      on SermonAudio.    Using the search terms, “marriage” “divorce”,  or “remarriage”,  SIFC was unable to bring up any sermons at all on those topics, despite GVBC having been in existence for ten years.    This could be because M D R (marriage, divorce and remarriage)  is a deliberately silent topic in his church, which is not at all unusual.   Nor is that necessarily a bad thing if the pastor does not believe in the no-excuses indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony.    Greg Locke is no Stephen Anderson.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Before wrapping up, a quick look at Tennessee divorce law indicates that, based on the longest of the many conflicting time frames Locke mentioned in the now-deleted facebook video,  the very  soonest this “dissolution” can be final is July, 2018, based on a combination of no-fault and 1 year desertion grounds, unless there is a mutual petition, in which case, the parents must still attend a parenting class before anything can be finalized, since there are minors in the home.  Other grounds require a trial and evidence, if contested, and that can take considerable time to get docketed.   Divorce petitions are public records, so the filing date is searchable in their county, and the petitioner can be known.   Locke insisted in the video that he didn’t file, and perhaps that’s true, but it’s also a matter of public record.   Melissa could have filed on either no-fault or adultery or banning from the home grounds, if it’s true that Greg didn’t file.   He stated that Melissa was sent, and is living out of state, so any divorce proceeding will entail delays and continuances, especially where children are involved.   The timing, therefore could not have been sufficient for a finalized decree, as Locke implied to the contrary, and Hall astutely disputed last week.    We all know that there are no “ex” wives in the kingdom of  God, only ex-adultery partners, so Locke was lying to himself and to God by deliberately calling Melissa his “ex” wife.   There is still time for the compassionate to pray for this family.

(Tennessee Code – Volume 6A, Title 36, Sections 36-4-101 and 36-4-103)

No-Fault:
(1) irreconcilable differences if: [a] there has been no denial of this ground; [b] the spouses submit a properly signed marital dissolution agreement (see below under Simplified or Special Divorce Procedures); or [c] this grounds for divorce is combined with a general fault-based grounds or (2) living separate and apart without cohabitation for 2 years when there are no minor children.                                                                                                                                                                                           Fault:
(1) impotence;                                                                                                                   (2) adultery;                                                                                                                        (3) conviction of a felony and imprisonment;                                                  (4) alcoholism and/or drug addiction;                                                                  (5) wife is pregnant by another at the time of marriage without husband’s knowledge;                                                                                                              (6) willful desertion for 1 year;                                                                                 (7) bigamy;                                                                                                                               (8) endangering the life of the spouse;                                                                (9) conviction of an infamous crime;                                                                  (10) refusing to move to Tennessee with a spouse and willfully absenting oneself from a new residence for 2 years;                                              (11) cruel and inhuman treatment or unsafe and improper marital conduct;                                                                                                                              (12) indignities that make the spouse’s life intolerable; and               (13) abandonment, neglect, or banning the spouse from the home.
If the court feels as though there is a possible chance of reconciliation, it will postpone any trial or hearing date and request the parties to attend mediation or counseling. In cases involving minor children, the court requires the parents to attend a parenting education class prior to the divorce being finalized.

Pastor Locke, you have the Other Woman’s children and four of your own, plus your entire congregation watching you turn your back on the Lord’s commandment.    The word of God says that we are a “kingdom of priests”, and God does not continue in fellowship with treacherous and violent priests.

“This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.   Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’  Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.  But not one has done so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring.  Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.”
– Malachi 2:13-15

UPDATE 1/21/2018:  Pulpit & Pen continues to be contacted by members of Locke’s church and by family members of the parties involved,  so they have continued to report on the situation.    They pulled the public record of the divorce filing, dated November 13, 2017,  Melissa as Plaintiff.    They also reportedly  located Melissa living in a women’s protective shelter.    The earliest an uncontested divorce can be final in the eyes of the State of Tennessee based on the filing date is mid-February, so Locke was clearly being untruthful in his January 11 video where he claimed to the public to be already “divorced”.      In the eyes of God, Greg and Melissa Locke,  and this Tai McGee and her rightful husband, will be married until one of each couple passes out of this life, and hence, it would have been so much better for everyone concerned if Melissa had taken her complaint to Criminal Court, instead of “family court”.    

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!