Category Archives: citizenship

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, family law, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Dear Moody Radio Share 2017

March 26, 2017 standerinfamilycourt 3 Comments

by Standerinfamiycourt

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On Wed, 3/22/17, Moody Radio, Share 2017 <moodyradio@moodycommunications.org> wrote:Subject: There’s Still Time to Give!
To: [standerinfamilycourt]
Date: Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 9:52 AMWe are so close, but we still need your help!{ SIFC note: about 8% short of goal on the day after their recent 3-day funding campaign ended, about the same as in the four prior years.]

If you haven’t already given during Share 2017, will you help Moody Radio reach our national goal?

So many of you have already given, but we are still short of our total need. If you have considered giving, it is not too late.

Remember, when you give to Share, you are sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in your community and across the globe.

Please prayerfully consider a generous gift today and Share the Word with others!

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On Sun, 3/26/17, <“standerinfamilycourt”> wrote:

Subject: Re: There’s Still Time to Give!
To: “Moody Radio” <moodyradio@moodycommunications.org>
Date: Sunday, March 26, 2017, 1:13 PM

Dear Moody Radio Management,

Perhaps this shortfall Moody keeps experiencing over the past few years is the Lord’s chastening, and not the economy. Many of us certainly love Up for Debate and most other Moody programs, but can offer no money for Moody Radio until all programs that regularly sanction legalized adultery are ceased and apologized for. If there’s a need for a “blended family pastor” ( just because he appears to be a “successful” legalized adulterer), it’s not surprising at all. People living in defiance of God’s clear word, rightly-divided, have homes absolutely rife with dysfunction – how can it be otherwise with the coveting and wrongful retention of another’s God-joined, covenant spouse (Matt. 19:6; Mal.2:14) ? It is the wicked desire to cling to this soul-destructive ongoing state of sin that fuels the demand for the likes of “Pastor” Ron Deal, as well as wicked books written by a host of adulterers and adulteresses (James 4:4).

Moody has on occasion shamelessly even offered these books as a donation-spurring mechanism, tickling the ears of people who desperately need to instead repent. Programs such as Focus on the Family, Family Life, and Building Relationships are three among many on Moody which are an affront to the kingdom of God for this reason, encouraging millions to live for self instead of taking up their cross of forgiveness and obedience to the harder commandments of Christ.
.

ὃς ἐὰν ἀπολελυμένην γαμήσῃ μοιχᾶται
whoever if her having been divorced shall marry commits [ present-indicative verb tense – Matt. 532b; Matt 19:9b-KJV, Luke 16:18 ] adultery

What IS surprising is Moody’s unabashed embrace of something that’s pointing the audience to hell instead of away from hell. R A Torrey would have been appalled, since Jesus stated on 3 different occasions that EVERYONE who marries a divorced person is committing ongoing adultery.

Torrey, in “How to Pray” (1900): “The prevailing immorality is found everywhere. Look at the legalized adultery we call divorce. Men marry one wife after another and are still admitted in good society; and women do likewise. There are thousands of supposedly respectable men in America living with other men’s wives, and thousands of supposedly respectable women living with other women’s husbands.”

It is on this same basis Paul stated twice to the body of believers that no unrepentant adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God, and also stated twice that only death, not any act of men, dissolves God-joined holy matrimony or severs the God-created,. supernatural one-flesh entity (sarx mia) which Jesus described in Matt. 19:6.

History has shown that no society can stand for more than 2-3 generations after enacting unilateral divorce if church leadership also accommodates it rather than remaining salty in resistance – witness ancient Israel who had to undertake the purging repentance from unlawful marriages described in Ezra, chapters 9 and 10, to recover their nation. Witness the late Roman Empire which was vanquished two generations after enacting the equivalent of today’s unilateral divorce — but Christ’s church survived and thrived because early church fathers were nearly unanimous in the faithful teaching that only death ends holy matrimony, and in disciplining its adulterers in the fashion Paul instructed in 1 Cor. 5. Failure to repent always leads to an insufficient number of well-adjusted citizens to overcome the rising numbers of wounded, deranged, demented and dysphoric citizens produced when both church and state institutionalize what Jesus consistently called adultery.

Two states with rare, godly legislators (Texas and Oklahoma) are currently working to repeal this immoral and unconstitutional civil law that has cost much of the church its very integrity over the past 5 decades — why do we hear nothing of this on Moody? Where is the call to prayer and fasting for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven? Could it be the snare of the fear of man is greater than the fear of God?

Respectfully, There’s Still Time to REPENT !

[“standerinfamilycourt”]

www.standerfamilycourt.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, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Let’s Take an AUTHENTIC Stand for Marriage, Christian Right

January 15, 2017 standerinfamilycourt 4 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

February 7 – 14 is National Marriage Week.
During this week, there will be much going on that is vital and valuable to our nation, but there will be no getting away from the fact that in the corrupted culture of contemporary evangelicaldom, it will be “finders keepers”, and millions in faux “marriages” which are not holy matrimony, will be encouraged to stay there at the peril of their very souls. The excellent organization, Breakpoint.org promotes it in this audio link dated January 5, 2017.

Talking about marriage “permanence” is politically acceptable to this crowd, but it will not resolve the nation’s problems because it will not touch the root issue. Rather, the message needs to be around the far more relevant and offensive topic of holy matrimony indissolubility, according to Matt.19:6,8 and Luke 16:18. This needs to be in the heaven-or-hell terms that Jesus and Paul unflinchingly cast it.

Some crucial topics not likely to be on this year’s agenda:

– When will pastors stop performing weddings that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous (and tell the congregation why) ?

– When will pastors stop signing civil marriage licenses that reflect the only unenforceable contract in American history, and which since 1970, in no way corresponds to Christ’s Matt. 19:4-6 definition of marriage?

– When will pastors stop smearing and stigmatizing the growing stream of true disciples of Jesus Christ who are coming out of adulterous civil unions in order to recover their inheritance in the kingdom of God?
[1 Cor. 6:9-10; Mal. 5:19-21-KJV)

– When will repealing unilateral divorce in all 50 states become as high a moral priority as outlawing the slave trade, or repealing Roe v. Wade, or ending sodomous “marriages” ?

Given what Jesus and Paul both had to say about remarriage adultery (repeatedly by each), true revival when it arrives, is going to look horrifying to the organizers of National Marriage Week, but it will be pleasing to God. The horror will not be due to the repenting prodigals, but due to five decades of false, hireling shepherds not doing the job the Owner of the fold gave them to safeguard souls first, and then covenant families.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, family law, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

The Obstructed View from 2002: Debating One-Flesh and Covenant From the Pulpit

May 2, 2016 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:19-24

Sometimes in this ministry, the Lord puts an unexpected enlightenment in our hands which allows us to get a very interesting glimpse of what has gone before in the history of the remarriage debate within the evangelical Protestant church. A late-night instant message linked SIFC to a very interesting recorded sermon where in late 2002, a Baptist pastor from Spring, TX was doing an excellent job of debunking 1 Corinthians 7, faithfully setting the record straight, section by section, on just who Paul was addressing with his various pieces of instruction, and methodically closing the door on the various evangelical heresies that proliferate (like mold) from the humanist propensity to “run with” advice that Paul meant for a different group, while ignoring the context (and even the content) of what he wrote within the same chapter. We have also blogged recently on this 1 Cor. 7 topic.

Despite the excellent insights this man of God was bringing forward in his message, around 25 minutes in he attempted to use the term “agamos” [ἄγαμος] , as in “let her remain unmarried” per 1 Cor. 7:11, to assert that man’s divorce was real in God’s eyes and that it indeed “dissolved” what both Jesus and Paul asserted could only be dissolved by death and by God’s hand. If according to Paul, she (Mrs. Verse 11) is “no longer married”, he argued, how can her marriage not actually be dissolved in God’s eyes? Overlooked is the fact that this passage is silent as to whether a civil divorce is actually undertaken by either spouse, rather than a mere separation. “Gamos” can mean either wedding or marriage, i.e. uniting with a spouse, so Paul’s usage could simply mean in a literal sense, “without a new spouse / wedding” while remaining perfectly consistent with Paul’s overall message about indissolubility except by death. This presumption on Rev. Caldwell’s part that man’s divorce dissolved holy matrimony was troubling, and since this message was part of a 12-part series, SIFC couldn’t help but wonder how this pastor treated the topic of God’s character in covenant, as well as the crucial topic of the one-flesh state and its severability or inseverability by acts of men short of dying.

Fortunately, this entire sermon series is available online, so a listen to the very first installment of the series proved a bit infuriating, but still very worthwhile for gleaning some insights into the development of evangelical heresies in both of those two pivotal matters, treatment of covenant, and treatment of the one-flesh state joined by God’s hand. So pivotal and central is a correct understanding of these, that if that foundation isn’t rock-solid, there is no adequate foundation for discerning or refuting the full range of divorce and remarriage heresies. (The only thing that’s equally pivotal in this regard is a correct understanding of the betrothal nature of our salvation, binding on heaven, but revocable by us through choosing to die in a persistent state of willful disobedience to His commandments.) Naturally, a Calvinist-leaning Baptist pastor is far more likely to temper his marriage permanence views on the notion of “once saved, always saved”, especially when faced with the discomfort of needing to admonish those who are living in a state of being adulterously “married” to someone else’s one-flesh partner, or when faced with the need to refuse to perform such a wedding. We know of only one (part-time) Baptist pastor whose “pastoral care” is biblically faithful to that extent.

Why did SIFC find the content of that first sermon on Genesis 2:18-24 infuriating as well as enlightening? First, it strikes us as highly unusual for a pastor, already brave enough to do a 12-part sermon series on marriage, divorce and remarriage, to do any sort of a studious “deep dive” into the supernatural nature of the one-flesh state. It far better serves the evangelical marriage revisionists to claim that the one-flesh state is a gradual human process accruing over the course of the union, rendering counterfeit spouses interchangeable with covenant spouses, with the passage of time. Even the very commendable, and far more accurate series by Church of Christ pastor David Sproule in 2013 didn’t linger long on the topic of one-flesh. What was triggering this in 2002, and why have we heard so little about it from any pulpits since?

Secondly, Rev. Caldwell of Spring, TX seemed to be coming up with a very novel treatment of Jesus’ command in Matthew 19:6, “therefore what God has joined, let no man separate.” He argues, while stating that John MacArthur also makes this point (but we must have missed it), that Jesus was not referring to individual couples in His commandment, but to the institution of holy matrimony as a whole. This, of course, implies that God covenants with an institution, but with regard to any given pair that He has joined, it’s a sliding covenant, that is, it is in bearer form. The sole biblical “support” offered for this idea is tenuous at best. Caldwell argues that Jesus’ use of the word translated “what” was deliberately chosen not to mean “whom“. That word in the original text shows as ὃ ( 3739 [e]
ho ), according to both www.biblehub.com and www.scripture4all.org. As we drill into the concordance reference, we find that it can mean either “what” or “whom”, depending on the context. We feel the context of Jesus’ words argues far more strongly for “whom“, otherwise Jesus would have been agreeing with the Pharisees and Moses, which He obviously did not do. If Caldwell got the notion and its support solely from MacArthur, it’s no surprise, the latter being notorious for the liberties he takes with his scriptural eisogesis when it comes to defending marriages that Jesus and Paul repeatedly called adulterous. Many denominations prefer, post-1970’s, to treat this verse as though it isn’t there – ignore it. Caldwell and MacArthur apparently prefer to redefine it. This appears to be a concept that didn’t develop the traction to go anywhere after that.

With regard to the first thing that’s noteworthy about Caldwell’s sermon, he mentions the work of Dr. William Heth of Taylor University in Indiana, an interdenominational Christian college. Caldwell is impressed (as are we) with Heth’s insight in his 1985 book, co-authored with Dr. Gordon Wenham, Jesus and Divorce: The Problem with the Evangelical Consensus, specifically, that the one-flesh joining of holy matrimony is a point-in-time event effected by God’s hand, and not a gradually-accruing process.

It turns out that the year 2002 produced quite a lot of scholarship (and pseudo-scholarship) on marriage ethics that apparently triggered Caldwell’s sermon series. That was the year that Dr. David Instone-Brewer published his studious, but thoroughly heretical book, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible

and it was a few years before Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary wrote an excellent scholarly paper rebutting that book. In 2002, the first of the tyrannical same-sex marriage lawsuits was surfacing in Massachusetts resulting in court-ordered legalization of sodomous nuptials the following year, and several years before the hypocritical implications of fighting off this development and its totalitarian fallout while cleaving fiercely to its entrenched system of legalized institutionalized adultery would begin to plague the evangelical church. In that same year, 2002, the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology published opposing pieces by Heth, who had now decided to align with Instone-Brewer in a reversal of conviction, and his former co-author Dr. Gordon Wenham who held true to the biblical position. This journal edition was also just beginning to grapple with the political rise of the homosexualist lobby. It is fairly likely that these 2002 developments were at least the backdrop, if not the actual trigger for Caldwell’s unusual deep-dive into one-flesh joining and God’s role in it.

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. – Galatians 1:10

As mentioned before, Heth had recently been influenced to change his earlier position to the liberal position of Instone-Brewer, a journey he describes in this journal article. This 2002 article reveals that Heth was not only swayed by the pseudo-scholarship of Instone-Brewer but also by two of the scholars mentioned (and quite convincingly rebutted) by Drs. Jones and Tarwater in their 2005 paper, Are Biblical Covenants Dissoluble? : Toward A Theology of Marriage. That scholar was G. Hugenberger, author of Marriage as a Covenant, in which he purported to cite Old Testament instances where God abandoned various covenants as evidence that the marriage covenant was dissoluble if one of the human parties declared it dissolved.
[ SIFC note: If Hugenberger’s rationale truly reflected God’s reality, this would greatly blunt the Christian community’s motivation to set aside their carnal proclivities and take a strong moral, political stand against the constitutionality of unilateral (“no-fault”) divorce, would it not? Instead, we have religious freedom legal defense ministries shamefully adopting a blanket policy not to get involved in such cases, claiming there’s only an “incidental” violation.]

To be clear, both Heth and Wenham had always taken the politically-correct Protestant position that divorce was “allowed” for so-called biblical grounds, hence that it was recognized by God and effectual in dissolving covenant marriage, but prior to Heth’s change of heart, both men agreed that remarriage while that “former” covenant spouse lived was forbidden by scripture. If a premise is incorrect in some respect, it’s really difficult to be on-target in the scholarly discussion that falls out from that. If divorce is indeed deemed to dissolve the marriage bond in God’s eyes (as per Hugenberger), what basis actually remains at the end of the day for forbidding remarriage? Indeed if either choice, to remarry or not to remarry, has no effect on either spouse’s eternal destination, why does the debate matter at all, in the first place, against that Calvinist backdrop? Heth journeyed to this new place, he tells us, under “concern” for the opinion of other renowned scholars toward his earlier work (fear of man exceeding the fear of God), and because Instone-Brewer’s arguments seemed compelling to him, as did Hugenberger’s.

What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written,
“That You may be justified in Your words,
And prevail when You re judged.” – Romans 3:3-4

From the Jones & Tarwater 2005 rebuttal to Hugenberger and Heth, page 10:

“…both Köstenberger and Heth appeal to the work of Gordon Hugenberger as the basis for their belief that covenants may be dissolved. Hugenberger contends that covenants can be both violated and dissolved, asserting that these ideas are conveyed by the same Hebrew expression (Hiphil of parar + berith).32 In order to corroborate this claim, Hugenberger cites fourteen scriptural examples of covenants that were ostensibly dissolved (Gen. 17:14; Lev. 26:44; Deut. 31:20; 1 Kgs. 15:19; Isa. 33:8; 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 14:21; 31:32; 33:20; Ezek. 16:59; 17:15; 44:7; Zech. 11:10-11).33

Despite Hugenberger’s monumental contribution to the study of biblical covenants, we are not persuaded by his evidence for dissolubility. While Hugenberger correctly notes that the Hebrew word parar may be translated with the English term “broken” or “annulled”34 — connoting violation or dissolution — parar does not necessarily carry both meanings at the same time. Imposing more than one meaning simultaneously upon parar is what James Barr calls the error of “illegitimate totality transfer.”35 In other words, it is wrong to conclude that because a covenant was “broken” it was, therefore, “dissolved.” An examination of the fourteen aforementioned examples, we believe, sufficiently demonstrates this truth.

First, three of the passages (1 Kgs. 15:19; Isa. 33:8; Ezek. 17:15) cited by Hugenberger refer to treaties between men where God is clearly not a covenanting party. Thus, even if these agreements were dissolved, they would have no bearing upon this study, for we are solely concerned with covenants in which God is a part. With that stated, it is not even certain that any of these three examples constitute an occasion on which a covenant was dissolved. In fact, the example from Ezekiel seems to illustrate the exact opposite as the prophet asks, “Can Israel break her sworn treaties like that and get away with it” (Ezek. 17:15)? The Lord answers with a resounding, “No!” (Ezek. 17:16). By allowing Israel to be punished, then, the Lord demonstrated the applicability and enduring nature of the terms of the covenant. Thus, these three examples fail to demonstrate that covenants in which God participates can be dissolved.

Second, two of Hugenberger’s examples (Jer. 14:21; 33:20) deal with the prophet Jeremiah’s consideration of whether or not the Lord will dissolve his covenant with Israel. Jeremiah records a prayer on behalf of Judah,

LORD, we confess our wickedness and that of our ancestors, too. We all have sinned against you. For the sake of your own name, LORD, do not disgrace yourself and the throne of your glory. Do not break your covenant with us (Jer. 14:20-21).

While it could be argued from this prayer that Jeremiah believed it was possible for God to dissolve his covenant, later God revealed that annulment of the covenant was not possible, not even theoretically, as he declared, “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself. I will rebuild you” (Jer. 31:3-4). Furthermore, in Hugenberger’s second example from Jeremiah, God demonstrates the permanence of his covenant by comparing it to the times of night and day: “If you can break my covenant with the day and the night so that they do not come on their usual schedule, only then will my covenant with David, my servant, be broken” (Jer. 33:20). Thus, these two examples fail to demonstrate that biblical covenants in which God participates can be dissolved — indeed, they seem to indicate the exact opposite.

Third, eight examples mentioned by Hugenberger (Gen. 17:14; Lev. 26:44; Deut. 31:20; Isa. 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 31:32; Ezek. 16:59; 44:7) refer to God’s people violating the terms of a covenant. A careful reading of these texts, however, reveals that such violations did not dissolve the covenants in question. For example, are we to believe that the Abrahamic covenant was dissolved (Gen. 17:14)? To the contrary, Scripture evidences that God’s covenant with Abraham was “forever” and “eternal” (Gen. 13:15; 17:8). Moreover, on at least eight different occasions, Scripture affirms that God “remembered” his covenant with Abraham.36 Thus, Gen. 17:14 cannot represent a dissolved covenant.

Contrary to Hugenberger’s interpretation, these eight examples of Israel “breaking” their covenant with the Lord beautifully illustrate God’s attitude toward the nature of covenants in which he participates. For example, Moses prophesied that the people would rebel and break God’s covenant (Deut. 31:20), and Scripture repeatedly records the fulfillment of this prophecy and its subsequent consequences (Isa. 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 31:32; Ezek. 16:59; 44:7). Yet, as we have argued above, the Lord’s punishment of his people for covenant violations is itself a de facto demonstration of the enduring nature of these arrangements. Ralph Alexander writes that the Lord’s punishment of his people affirms “his immutable faithfulness to his covenants.”37 Similarly, Andersen and Freedman comment on God’s wrath toward covenant disobedience noting that, “The punishment is not an expression of a broken relationship. On the contrary, it is enforced within the relationship; punishment maintains the covenant.”38 Therefore, as with the previous examples, these eight citations fail to demonstrate that biblical covenants in which God participates can be dissolved.

The prophet Zechariah presents the final example (Zech. 11:10-11) cited by Hugenberger. When Israel returned from exile, God implored the people not to act like their fathers had before them (Zech. 1:1-6), because real blessings, Zechariah records, will come only when God’s people obey him and walk in righteousness (3:7; 6:15; 7:9-14; 8:14-17). Sadly, however, the people acted as did their ancestors whose behavior had caused them to be exiled (Zech. 7:1-14). The people of Zechariah’s day had rejected the pleas of the righteous and consequently, writes the prophet, the Lord would withhold his covenant protection if there was no repentance (Zech. 11:10) — that is, God would “break” his covenant. Did the Lord, therefore, dissolve the covenant he had made? Certainly not, as the last three chapters of the book present an eschatological picture of God pouring out his grace upon the nation in the end times (12:10-14:11). Once again, far from dissolution, God’s judgment demonstrates his faithfulness to the covenant.

In addition to the fourteen examples cited by Hugenberger, we surveyed every example of berith in the Old Testament (267 examples), as well as of diatheke and suntheke in the New Testament (34 examples), and were unable to discover a single example of a dissolved covenant in which God participated. Like the language used to describe the nature of biblical covenants, the manner in which covenants are established, and the way in which God deals with covenant violations, the absence of any dissolved covenants in which God participates provides evidence that points to the indissoluble nature of biblical covenants.

Since Rev. Caldwell especially highlighted Dr. Heth’s writings about the nature of the one-flesh relationship, and to Rev. Caldwell’s credit he noted God’s hand in creating it instantaneously, we looked forward to seeing firsthand how Dr. Heth treated the topic of one-flesh and how he could possibly reconcile his new liberal views with what Jesus said in Matt. 19:6 about it being inseverable except by death. It turns out that Dr. Heth’s revised view fails to mention God’s hand at all, nor the supernatural, instantaneous event. He instead chooses to degrade sarx mia to hen soma, citing Gen. 29:14; 37:27; Lev. 18:6; 2 Samuel 5:1; Isaiah 58:7), and steers well clear of the enlightening New Testament descriptions delivered by Jesus and by Paul, for example, Eph. 5:28-30.

“I had argued that the covenant and consummation of marriage made two totally unrelated people as closely related as they will be to their own flesh and blood children. However, the unity between unrelated persons established by the marriage covenant is not the same as the vertical blood relationship between a parent and a child nor the horizontal blood relationship that exists between siblings. The Genesis 2:24 phrase, “they become one flesh,” refers “to the bondedness which results from and is expressed by sexual union” and “refers to the establishment of a new family unit”..

(Dr. Heth, that’s not what Jesus said and you know it.)
Today we know that even sodomists claim to form a sexual union and a “new family unit” under the sanction of the civil state, but today Dr. Heth might well be the first to protest that there’s no one-flesh relationship since God’s hand isn’t joining them, given the correct views he once held but “repented” of with regard to heterosexual unions.

Heth’s co-author, Dr. Wenham, on the other hand, in his countering article tragically fails to address the one-flesh relationship at all, and only touches on the nature of covenant in passing, leaving Heth’s newly-embraced fallacies unrebutted scripturally. Instead, Wenham embarks on a much-needed contextual argument for the invalidity of concluding that one may remarry after divorce. He does a masterful job of starting with ante-Nicene church fathers, then working back in time to the apostles’ positions, then the person of Jesus, and finally Judaic tradition, showing quite effectively how none of these support the Erasmean view that the innocent party in adultery or abandonment may remarry. At one point in the article, Dr. Wenham says this:

“The same is true of the second half of the statement in both gospels: “He who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18b); “If she divorces her husband and marriesanother, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:12). The Lukan form of the statement is almost the same as Matthew 5:32b. The Markan form is unusual in envisaging a woman taking the initiative in divorce proceedings, which rarely happened in first century Palestine. But what is striking about both forms of the saying is the implication that divorce does not break the marriage bond, so that sexual relations with anyone but one’s first spouse is adultery.

Unfortunately, this is the closest Wenham ever comes to deducing that divorce is entirely man-made and not recognized by God, i.e. that only death dissolves a God-joined union, or that not all civilly-sanctioned heterosexual unions are God-joined for that very reason. In other words, he never brings his accurate observations to their full inevitable conclusion, and never makes the heaven-or-hell linkage with 1 Cor. 6:9-10 or with Galatians 5:19-21. Perhaps if he had, he’d have never been published in a Southern Baptist scholarly journal.

Dr. Al Moehler was the editor-in-chief of that 2002 journal edition. In 2010, Dr. Moehler went on to write a convicting and influential article, Divorce – the Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. How much more convicting and influential might this piece have been if the deceiver hadn’t wooed away Dr. Heth and broken up the collaboration with Dr. Wenham, curtailing their further studies into the divine and inseverable nature of the one-flesh relationship that God has now revealed to so many in the common laity.

(Our previous posts on the topics of one-flesh and God’s character in covenants with men are here and here.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

Another Year, Another Set of Reformation Day Musings: Our Betrothal to Christ

November 1, 2015 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by standerinfamilycourt

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” Matt. 16:19

For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. 1 Timothy 2: 5-6

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9-10

It was exactly a year ago that the events of 2013-2014 had me thinking about All Saints Day in a way I never had before. There had been a startling and shocking rise in martyrdom abroad. The Vatican had just concluded Installment 1 of their Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, with the alarming news that the Vatican was seriously considering changing 2,000 years of marriage doctrine to emulate an apostate aspect of the Protestant Church — with no apparent regard to the resulting societal degradation, nor awareness of discipline of the Lord’s hand coming to bear on her rebellious cousin in consequence of the same.

With my fledgling blog and Facebook pages, this Pentecostal believer had been slowly forging alliances with traditional family champions and organizations, a disproportionate number of whom were Roman Catholics. I had just come through Round 1 with the family court system / Sexual Revolution Enforcement, which left me feeling like a bit of a religious martyr myself ahead of the pending constitutional appeal of the retaliatory decree. I felt the urge to capture these events in an early blog, not even realizing that the year 2015 would unfold so very many significant related events that would be very much of a reprise of the prior year. And so, here we are, still even more threatened by the twin terrors that overhang our nation: sexual anarchy and militant Islam, and wondering if there will be a Great Awakening, or instead, the sealing of God’s judgment.

The Lord had considerably more to walk this covenant marriage stander through in the months following this post. The original thought was to use the blog and Facebook page to write about my journey through the family court system and appeal process, through the lens of faith in Jesus Christ and the lens of what the word of God has to say about the indissolubility of covenant marriage. I hoped to inform anyone interested of the many ways in which unilateral divorce laws deny basic fundamental rights protected by our Constitution for all other citizens except “Respondents” to a so-called no-fault petition. Little did I realize that this effort would soon put me in contact with a treasured network of accomplished bible scholars and church historians, right within the community of covenant marriage standers, who would bring so much richness to my task, and transform the direction of these pages in a way that was much bigger than my limited vision, to bridge between the national, political pro-family network and the geographically-dispersed community of standers, two groups who may never have become aware of their common journey, or even aware of each other’s existence otherwise. I can’t begin to describe the awe that comes with feeling the Lord’s hand in orchestration of an assignment, and the providence that unfolds for it to be advanced. I can only sing His praises for it.

In the early months of 2015, I was introduced to the ante-Nicene church fathers, and would find out that for the 400 years after Jesus went to the cross, every one of them articulated in his own way, what prior to this I only knew through scripture and personal Holy Spirit revelation, that man had no power or authority to dissolve a marriage covenant, nor unjoin what God had joined short of death.
I learned hermeneutic, historical and cultural facts that, for the first time in my long walk with the Lord, caused the scriptures on marriage to finally hold together, rather than contradict each other.
I learned much more about the forces and activities involved in the Reformation’s handling of marriage doctrine, including motives and mechanisms that impacted the way scripture came down to us.
I learned about the church wolves who co-opted and countermanded the teachings of Jesus they deemed to be too harsh. In the process, I learned some appalling facts about the dark side of the character of some of the Reformers, and I learned the history, circumstances and effects of fraudulently handing marriage over to the civil (state) authorities in order to obtain access to dissolution proclamations denied by the Church of Jesus Christ.

In the process, I resolved all lingering doubt in my mind that unrepentant rebellion against God, in marrying another person while a covenant spouse is alive, will cost a person their inheritance in the kingdom of God. In other words, 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 is most certainly talking about this kind of adulterer. In fact, I realized that this type of adulterer is the only type Jesus is ever recorded in the gospels as defining, and that He warned about this soul-corrupting sin on three different occasions, in a way that leaves me wondering how anyone could possibly wager their eternity on an “exception clause” called fornication (misconstrued, “adultery”).

The news that came down in early September from the Vatican removed all doubt that the Roman Catholic Church was casting about for a way to shore up membership by joining its Protestant counterparts in betraying Christ’s teaching on the absolute indissolubility of sacramental covenant marriage. Since Pope Innocent III in the 12th century, the mechanism for doing so had been “annulment”, i.e. the outright denial that the events Jesus describes in Matthew 19:5-6 and Mark 10:8-9 have actually occurred between a biblically-eligible husband and covenant wife who, sometimes many years and children earlier, had repeated vows before God and (sometimes), a priest. In what Pope Francis has dubbed “the year of mercy”, this initiative speeds up the denial of covenant process and makes it cost-free at the sole discretion of a local bishop. Obviously, with inheritance in the kingdom of God at stake, one has to question how truly “merciful” this approach is, but making what is portrayed as an “administrative enhancement” was observed by commentators as aimed at taking the pressure off the twin proposal to administer communion to remarried adulterers. That seemed fine with a majority of the Western prelates, but SIFC was thanking God for the spirited opposition of the African church fathers to abandoning the sanctity of marriage in this fashion.

This past year, of course, also brought the constitutionally-jarring Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v Hodges on June 26, 2015, and along with it, an opportunity to observe the response of both the Protestant and Catholic Churches, particularly with regard to any signs of introspection, not just the predictable denouncement of the 50-state imposition of sodomized marriage over the democratic will of the super-majorities in numerous states. It should be noted that the “mercy” proposals of the RCC included the same embrace of “married” or “committed” sodomists as well as “married” adulterers. For now it appears that this latter proposal failed in the 2015 Synod completely, and opposition from the Pope was unequivocal. This essentially puts the Catholic and Protestant churches on the same page — tolerating legalized adultery, but vocally rejecting recognition of legalized sodomy. To be sure, there have been some glimmers of introspection concerning accommodation of so-called no fault (unilateral) divorce start to hit the evangelical blogosphere, along with some non-cleric Catholic voices urging a challenge of the religious freedom infringements, but nothing of substance so far. There also does not appear to be much evidence that the “Marriage Pledge” advocated a year ago by First Things Magazine is being implemented, whereby more than 800 clergy of all traditions vowed to stop signing civil marriage licenses if same-sex marriage was imposed by the courts.

In this past year, SIFC also learned to critically question her NIV and NAS bibles, and (thankfully) how to hold them up to the various online tools of detection and scrutiny. I learned that part of the need for this actually had roots in the Reformation and also in the backlash against the Reformation. Once again, this provided the missing puzzle piece for my prior (externally-imposed) fog of why the two or three most commonly relied-upon marriage scriptures didn’t seem to line up with the vast body of the remaining scriptures. My eyes were opened up to incredible facts about how ancient bible manuscripts were chosen and the variations those choices caused in consequence of faithfulness to the original teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.

(photo and downloadable PDF by Sharon Henry)

Since the King James Version has never been for me very conducive to undistracted personal bible study, it was a relief to learn that there is now a contemporary bible translation available, and actually downloadable free-of-charge in PDF version which is translated from faithful manuscripts by a qualified born-again translator, Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s New Testament, called Sovereign Creator Has Spoken (2013).

Of course, the basic tenet of the Reformation, that we are saved by grace alone, by faith in Jesus Christ alone (justification) has also come into sharper focus for me during this unexpected 2015 journey. It did not take long to determine several years ago that heresies tend to pair off, and the heresy that there are “biblical grounds” to marry someone else’s spouse or marry an eligible person following man’s divorce on certain grounds was usually justified with the corollary that even if Jesus really meant what He said about this being adultery, Jesus died for all sins, “yesterday, today and tomorrow”, the idea of physical repentance from remarriage adultery was therefore “legalism” and “salvation by works”. SIFC certainly agrees that Jesus died for our sins of yesterday, and for our nonwillful, unconfessed sins of today, but the tomorrow part has always been a bit problematic. Always before, I resolved it by what the Lord responded back to me in times of prayer and fasting: that a clearly-regenerated (born again) soul can walk away from their salvation, but the fact that they are sealed with the Holy Spirit as a deposit makes that hard — and the Lord pursues hard. Seemingly on an unrelated note, I couldn’t help but notice in certain conversations I observed standers having online with theologians, any mention of the Hebrew betrothal analogy in general, and Mary and Joseph’s betrothal in particular, were summarily dismissed and rebuffed. Usually this was in the context of the running dispute over whether the Greek “porneia” in the presumed Matthean exception clause was to be rendered “whoredom / fornication”, or “sexual immorality”, thereby including post-wedding adultery and (although this rendering still contorts the sentence structure of both Matt. 5:32 and Matt. 19:9), justifying a claim that the marriage covenant is dissolved with Christ’s “authority”. By the same reasoning, then, the OSAS crowd must accept that Christ can therefore divorce us and marry another, but in bizarre fashion, some of them actually make this very same argument against themselves!

Then I had an opportunity to read Casey Whitaker’s “Have Ye Not Read?” – Chapter 10, and struck upon a much deeper insight about Paul’s admonition to “finish the race”. Marriage forms the basis for analogy for our walk with the Lord in so many different aspects, and I believe it does so uniformly when indissolubility is embraced by the believer as well.

Is the marriage supper of the Lamb not in heaven? Is it therefore in the future? Do we not have to actually show up for it? Can we be walking (or running) in the opposite direction and expect to arrive there properly attired and equipped before we run out of time?

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son….But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he *said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” Matt. 22: 2, 11-14

Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, ⁴but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the prudent, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the prudent answered, ‘No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. Later the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open up for us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly I say to you, I do not know you.’ Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour. Matthew 25: 1-13

These two parables, of course, like so much of Matthew’s gospel make sense only in the context of the Hebrew betrothal. Christ died for our justification, enabling but not guaranteeing our sanctification.

Finally, there has been much discussion lately whether the Counter-Reformation continues, and in similar vein, whether the Reformation is itself now under reformation. The last 15 minutes or so of the video linked above addresses this more authoritatively than SIFC could, including the connections with the Emergent Church, with the Jesuit challenges, and with the push toward ecumenism. All of these things have unmistakable ties to the prophecy of Daniel, and to that in Revelation. Given the fulfillment of the prophesied recent events in the Middle East and given Russia’s renewed involvement, given the push by Pope Francis, who is indeed the first Jesuit pope, while recently in the U.S. to meet with representatives of non-Christian religions, and given the documentation of plans originating in the late 19th century exposed in A. Ralph Epperson’s 1989 book concerning the New World Order, SIFC’s pope-watching has begun in earnest. Yet at the same time, the backlash has also been noticeably ramping up from those who say there will be no Rapture of the church, and that all prophecies were fulfilled by A.D. 70. In general, these are evangelical leaders who want the current system of entrenched institutional serial polygamy to continue, and for whom the culture war is an ideology of politics dressed in piety far more than it is truthfully contending for the kingdom of God.

We shall see what 2016 brings, especially in terms of the scheduled change in leadership for the United States.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Fundamental Rights, morality, Religious freedom

Questions, RE: Ask Dr. Brown’s Warning to Shepherds Who Mislead The Sheep

October 28, 2015 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

Dr. Brown, in August of this year you did a marvelous piece that went out to hundeds of people on our page and was very well-received. It was called “Christians HAVE been Hypocrites, Now What?” Connecting the dots, it stands to reason that each retained act or position of hypocrisy pushes more sheep over the cliff (or keeps them hiding in the bramble bushes!).

In it, you quite accurately stated,

“That’s why I’ve said for years now that no-fault heterosexual divorce has done more in the church to undermine marriage than all gay activists combined, and that’s why I’m all for any spiritual movement that calls us to recognize, confess and forsake our sins by the grace of God and the power of Jesus’ blood. Repentance blames no one else and makes no excuses. Instead it takes full responsibility and makes an about-face, receiving mercy and restoration from the Father.”

The community of covenant marriage standers would like to ask a few questions about how this is playing out in your church and circle of influence, therefore, in the months since you wrote this piece:

(1) Are you expecting most of the repentance to come from the flock? If so, is there any particular sin cordoned off as not requiring cessation and renouncement as part of repentance?

(2) Are you teaching people the full truth about how Jesus defined adultery? Do you teach Matt. 5:32b as well as Matt. 5:28? Do you teach Matt. 19:9b (or only the NIV version)? When was the last time you preached on Luke 16:18?

(3) Are you teaching people that the “b” portion of these scriptures, relating to the otherwise-innocent person who marries somebody else’s spouse, carries NO “exception clause”?

(4) Speaking of question (2), are you teaching your flock the things that are necessary since the start of the 20th century (post-Westcott & Hort) to be true “Bereans”? Are you teaching them the basic principles of hermeneutics, what an interlinear text tool is online, the character and history of the men who shaped their NIV, and the critical information about the manuscripts their bible is based on? Do they know that 47 verses have likely been eliminated from their bible version due to the prejudiced choice of manuscripts? Do you teach them to compare modern lexicons, commentaries and bible dictionaries with those written prior to the 19th century and encourage them to research the discrepancies when it’s a verse dealing with marriage and sexual ethics?

(5) Do your people know who the church fathers were for the first 4 centuries of the church, and whether any of them taught a “Matthean exception” or a “Pauline privilege”? Do they know the true history of and when and why these things actually began to be taught in the church?

(6) Do you have people in leadership or on staff who are the husband of more than one wife, the wife of more than one husband, or do you give them a pass if it’s 1-at-a-time? Have you considered the example that this sets, in light of Paul’s well known instructions to Timothy and Titus?

(7) Are you rewarding and incentivizing no-fault divorce by performing weddings that you’d be deeply ashamed to invite Jesus to, after the way HE defined adultery? Are you pronouncing some people “man and wife” instead of pronouncing them serial polygamists?

(8) Do they see you and your team walking before them in the uncompromised fear of God above all fear of men?

(9) What are you doing politically to repeal or reform unilateral divorce? Your congregation no doubt knows which constitutional protections are violated by sodomous/polygamous/incestuous marriage — but do they know that unilateral (no-fault) divorce laws violate the exact same fundamental rights, including religious freedom and right-of-conscience? Do they know how much these violations have cost taxpayers every year in transferred social costs?

(10) Do you preach “once saved, always saved”, or do you realize that our human marriages are an analogy of the Messianic Covenant all the way from Genesis to Revelation? Surely with your background you’re aware that Jesus’ “script” for the Last Supper was verbatim the Hebrew betrothal ceremony, and that an unfaithful bride who turned away and didn’t show up for the marriage supper, no oil in her lamp, no wedding garments, without confessing and repenting, broke her ketubah and would be divorced by the Bridegroom instead of becoming the bride as intended. Is it then so inconsistent for Paul to apply 1 Cor. 6:9-10 , Galatians 5:19-21 and Hebrews 13:4 to those Jesus actively and repeatedly called adulterers?

For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

2 Corinthians 11:2

Knowing that God protects and delivers when we are no longer mocking Him, we trust you have been working on some of these and will consider the ones you haven’t had a chance to think about just yet. – “standerinfamilycourt”

#1M1W4L #LukeSixteenEighteen

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, marriage, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

An Encouragement to Covenant Marriage Standers

August 2, 2015 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

SIFC was privileged to attend a recent live lecture this past week with bible teacher / historian Ray Vander Laan. This evening was eagerly anticipated because it was the series of episodes, That the World May Know, around Holy Land history and archaelogy tours hosted by Vander Laan that electrified the word of God in my well-worn bible some 10 years ago. I had known deep in my spirit from the earliest days of walking with the Lord that His covenants were indissoluble and that He fiercely guarded their integrity, but this was basically the extent of my understanding until Vander Laan’s “Come! Let’s go see…” [that week’s episode] took me deeper and deeper into the context of what the Lord was doing in Israel, in prophecy, and in His broad purposes. It was, in fact, all cast against a background of faithful covenant. I started to gain some very rich depth of understanding of the textures that our indissoluble marriage covenant was to represent to the world, even under siege as it was, and even in its violated and tattered condition. Vander Laan’s previous series on the 7 churches of the Revelation is, in my opinion, a “must-watch” in these days of explosive culture war and Christ’s imminent return.

The purpose of the live presentation was to introduce and preview the newest series called “Becoming A Kingdom of Priests in a Prodigal World”, a series very much about engaging the culture we face. The producers see this as a new undertaking in light of the rise of LGBT totalitarianism and the resulting defilement of marriage. Astute standers would say that the prior series begun in 1993 were massively important in rebuking the culture of divorce and immoral remarriage that long preceded the current wave of marriage redefinition.

This preview episode places the tour group at the top of a mountain in the general vicinity of Mount Sinai where Moses received the 10 Commandments:

“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” – Exodus 19:5-6

What did the Lord mean by “keep My covenant”? Vander Laan pointed out that the 10 Commandments were actually a marriage vow between the Most High and His people Israel. It struck me that the “grafted-in” (Gentile) body of Christ has institutionalized serial monogamy / sequential polygamy in the last 50 years by embracing the pretense of covenant dissolution because it has “irreconcilable differences” with the 1^st, 7^th and 10^th commandments in that marriage vow on stone tablets. Additionally, its shepherds have “irreconcilable differences” with the 4^th commandment as they misuse the Lord’s name in pronouncing holy matrimony over unions that Christ would call adulterous. In that sense, the bride of Christ is herself a prodigal in these last days. The word “prodigal” literally means “wasteful”, though prodigals are the last to see what is squandered in undermining covenant families while giving unrighteous preference to “blended” ones.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. – 1 Peter 2:9-12

I’d like to share a few additional highlights of the lecture before directing you to click here to view a 30-minute full-length episode:

Vander Laan points out that the mission of a priest is to put the full glory of the Lord on display for all to see, and that the biblical kingdom is where the King is obeyed. The kingdom of God expands in proportion to that obedience.

He next points out that context is everything when it comes to reading bible text, he quoted Acts 16:12 (Luke’s narrative with Paul): “…and from there to Philippi which is a leading city in the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony, and we were staying in this city for some days…” What was the significance of the Roman colony? Romans set these remote cities up where all features of Roman life were to be on display, and all inhabitants would be bestowed all the benefits of Roman citizenship. Luke was likening the kingdom of God to this model Roman colony in how we live, already being citizens of heaven, before others. This was evidenced in the conversion of the Philippian jailer and his family, verses 31-34 after the Lord responded supernaturally to Paul’s and Silas’ singing of hymns and praises to God. Our culture will be strange to the aliens we live among. We are a “peculiar people”.

It’s OK to wrestle with God, for He favors “chutzpah” – intense persistence and a passionate refusal to give up, such as that which characterizes long-standing covenant keepers. According to Vander Laan, there is a saying, “when life becomes a desert, the Greeks question whether there is a god, but Jews question God.”

Most of us know the account in Genesis 15:9-17 of the blood covenant God made with Abraham in the splitting of cow, goat, and ram, where the custom was to walk through the blood implying “so may you do to me, if I do not keep my covenant”, yet something unique happened in this situation. Abraham knew the minute he passed through he was a dead man, because his end of the covenant was to walk blamelessly before his God, yet the Lord had it covered for him:

“Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds….Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him…It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.”

The Most High not only made the covenant unconditional, He took up Abraham’s part in passing through the blood. God’s end of the covenant? Land, descendants and the Messiah, the means of covenant fulfillment.

SIFC note: In a covenant marriage, the covenant is between God and the one-flesh entity He has supernaturally joined. (In a non-covenant union that Jesus calls adulterous due to the unbroken prior covenant, there is merely a contract between two people without God’s participation). God’s participation in the same manner as with Abraham also makes a way for the fulfillment of that covenant despite circumstances or human faithfulness. All covenant marriage standers should read the account of Abraham’s faith in Romans 4 for encouragement.

Priests were instructed through Moses to sew long tassels on their garments, with one blue thread which was the color of the priesthood. The significance to today’s covenant standers is that the tassels were a reminder as follows (Numbers 15:37-40):

The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God.”

Are we remembering our role in His priesthood every day? Are we sewing those tassels to the garments of our prodigals, as our privilege as their one-flesh enables? Non-covenants lack this privilege and are acting as a counter-witness to the kingdom of God. The rebellion of remarriage adultery shrinks the kingdom, rather than expands it. Their “colony” represents temporal life in this world only.

Wrapping up, I will mention that since 1993, the producer of That the World May Know is Focus on the Family. I can say that apart from FOTF’s Adventures in Odyssey, this is the best of all that they sponsor, and probably their only adult programming that builds up covenant families rather than undermining them through their support of adulterous remarriage. I hope other standers gain rich encouragement from all of these series and episodes from the Holy Land.

SIFC note: When Ray is not producing a new episode on location, he returns to his life as the teacher of a discipleship class in Michigan for high school seniors.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom

Courts and Religious Freedom Dichotomy: Coincidence or “God-incidence”?

July 5, 2015 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

“The alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower…. he shall be the head, and you will be the tail.

“So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you….The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.” – Deuteronomy 28:43-45, 49

“Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? ….You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God? For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” just as it is written.
– Romans 1:28-32

[UPDATE: On July 14, 2015 the 10th Federal Circuit ruled against an injunction protecting the non-profit Little Sisters of the Poor from the HHS mandate to provide abortifacients and birth control to employees against their 1st Amendment right to free religious exercise, while on July 17, 2015 a judge in Federal district court, in he 7th Circuit reached the opposite result and granted a permanent injunction to for-profit Tyndale House Publishers.]

One week after the cataclysmic 5-4 pronouncement of the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges, a poignant reminder of a very different sort of religious freedom pronouncement came up in SIFC’s i-phone, as decided by all the same SCOTUS justices only a year ago, June, 2014. Obergefell held that a newly-minted 14th Amendment fundamental right to redefine civil marriage, and to state-enforced “dignity” (which nevertheless remains a perception of the heart, mind and will as reflected against the backdrop of God’s law) shall supercede the very first fundamental right enumerated in the Bill of Rights, our irreplaceable freedom of religious exercise and of acting on our right of conscience. Unlike Obergefell, that 5-4 majority based their finding on sound constitutional analysis, with appropriate respect for precedent. That 2014 case was Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

The Becket Fund, a public interest religious freedom law firm that successfully represented Hobby Lobby before the Supreme Court last year has also enjoyed a long list of judicial successes affirming Christian-owned profit and non-profit entities who object to the requirements in the Obamacare mandate to provide birth control and abortifacient drugs to their employees. In so doing, they are upholding a “non-negotiable” in the kingdom of God that dates back to the days immediately following the days of Noah’s flood. God promised with a rainbow reminder to never again wipe out all life on the earth in a single event, no matter how vile and wicked man became again. He laid down one expectation, however: honor life.

Of the dozens of HHS mandate cases filed by religious non-profit organizations and Christian-owned for-profit firms, there have been 28 successful injunction requests to bar enforcement versus only 6 cases denied, and 6 favorable Supreme Court orders resulting directly from the Hobby Lobby ruling. In the case of a similar number of for-profit firms, there have been 8 temporary injunctions and 39 permanent injunctions granted, versus only one denial.

By contrast, the same pro-family, religious freedom Christian law firms, such as Liberty Counsel and the Alliance Defending Freedom, who were so successfully defending their clients’ honor of life issues in court, were at the same time losing virtually every case in every state and Federal Circuit where they attempted to uphold only half of God’s definition of marriage – complementarity, but not permanence. Sanctity-of-marriage is God’s second “non-negotiable“, one that He expects to be defended from far more than only the gender-confused.

Some of the judges in those cases bluntly pointed out the brazen hypocrisy of attempted sanctity-of-marriage arguments which centered around the welfare of the children, but in the face of those states’ unilateral divorce laws which ruthlessly subjugate the rights of the children of covenant marriages to the (apparently) “compelling” state interest of sexual autonomy for the petitioning parent. For example, Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit, in Latta v Otter eloquently opined:

“If defendants really wished to ensure that as many children as possible had married parents, they would do well to rescind the right to no-fault divorce, or to divorce altogether. Neither has done so. Such reforms might face constitutional difficulties of their own, but they would at least further the states’ asserted interest in solidifying marriage.”

In fact, several of these public interest legal firms who have in their mission statements expressed sanctity-of-marriage and religious freedom-of-conscience aspirations told SIFC in May, 2013 that the punitive confiscation of retirement funds from a non-offending Christian spouse to award to the offending petitioner as a result of an unwanted marriage dissolution was only an “incidental” religious freedom burden. The severe curtailment on technical grounds of the right to bring evidence in a dissipation of marital assets claim (that would otherwise defend against such confiscation) solely because of refusing to file one’s own petition based on biblical conviction was not an unconstitutional violation of freedom of conscience. Constitutional attorneys from a firm which regularly works for these legal ministries, once they were retained with SIFC’s personal funds, resoundingly disagreed with their assessment, and have filed her appeal accordingly.

What is even more uncanny as the marriage redefinition cases unfolded, is the unsoundness of the legal reasoning on which those cases were decided, especially the Obergefell decision. The favorable hand of God in the HHS cases was nowhere to be seen in the cases that would further desecrate marriage and bring fines and penalties to hundreds of Christian businesses in wedding-related goods, services and facilities. If marriage is a sacred symbol for the relationship between Christ and His church, where was the protective hand of God in those cases? Why was the situation so out of hand that two Justices who were performing these sodomy ceremonies and making biased personal statements before the oral arguments were even heard, were not strongly compelled to recuse themselves for the sake of retaining confidence in the integrity of the Court?

Like the harlot of the Book of Proverbs who eats and wipes her mouth, declaring she has done nothing wrong, the aftermath of the SCOTUS announcement shows a defiant, rather than a reflective and repentant mood among the nation’s most influential Christian evangelical leaders. Some even got into unseemly skirmishes with each other on the battlefield of their respective blogs and facebook pages. There is much talk of civil disobedience, of church leaders going to jail rather than follow a Federally / judicially-imposed national marriage law. There are state efforts to cease issuing marriage licenses to anyone. Nobody seems to even miss the conspicuous absence of the Most High so soon after His stunning presence in defeating the HHS mandate over the same 12 month period. Only a few are speaking publicly about the connection with unilateral divorce, and none are doing so with a view toward reforming or repealing these laws in order to fundamentally, rather than superficially, rebuild a culture of marriage.

Instead of any sign of contrition on the part of evangelical leaders in the week that has followed the Court’s announcement, in the form of a pledge to stop performing weddings where there is an estranged living spouse, or to work toward reform or repeal of unilateral divorce laws, all the talk was about circling the wagons around all marriages (whether covenant, or adulterous remarriages) to discourage future divorces, and to “educate young people to choose their spouses with more discernment”. (SIFC suggests they start with the most basic counsel: don’t marry somebody else’s spouse!)

Any suggestion is ignored or rebuffed that a real dilemma looms wherein pastors will find themselves counseling “married” homosexuals differently than those suffering the corruption reaped from their own flesh due to being in civil marriages whose roots were adulterous. Meanwhile, churches are bracing for a likely loss of tax exemptions and liability insurance, while perhaps not even understanding that a future of vandalism and harassment also awaits their events. Such was carried out in the past in various states by activists against congregations that continue to teach that homosexuality is immoral. In the UK, Canada, and several other countries, it has become illegal “hate speech” to read certain scriptures from a standard bible behind the pulpit. How will a church or denomination that couldn’t even withstand the “persecution” of people going down the street in order to defend the sanctity of biblical, covenant heterosexual marriage stand when unprecedented TRUE persecution ramps up?

Where was the Lord in 2013 when SCOTUS was formulating their decisions in the cases of Hollingsworth v Perry and United States v Windsor? Many fasted and prayed fervently for His intervention that would have prevented trampling of our Constitution that followed, and also prevented so much suffering for His servants running wedding industry businesses. Why didn’t that sway the Most High? Why did He instead choose to show Himself mighty in the Hobby Lobby case? Could it be that He was having a very hard time getting the attention of His shepherds, and was determined to keep trying?

SIFC is personally thankful for some of the precedents that came out of the various marriage redefinition rulings in the lower courts. Even when the Lord sent Judah and Israel, the apple of His eye, into captivity, He continued to prosper His people until they repented. He used the resources of her enemies and even urged the people to pray for the prosperity of Babylon while they were exiles in that land. The Lord shows Himself mightiest when He even goes so far as to turn the enemy’s own weapons back on the enemy. May it be so here, in Jesus’ name.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, morality

Covering Thy Garment with Violence: WHY LUTHER RENDERED MARRIAGE UNTO CAESAR

May 22, 2015 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent toconstitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life,do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
– 1 Cor. 6: 1-6

He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. – Matthew 19:8

In November, 2014 quite an interdenominational debate broke out between between church leaders over a document called The Marriage Pledge, as reported in First Things magazine. As of the date of the November article, 464 Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Mennonite, Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal leaders had agreed on paper that if marriage was redefined by the courts to include homosexual unions, these leaders would discontinue their agency role of signing their respective states’ marriage certificates, and henceforth would only issue ecclesiastical marriage certificates for weddings they perform. If government benefits and state recognition of the marriage was additionally desired, the newlyweds would have a second stop to make down at the county courthouse. Clearly this was aimed at protecting their right-of-conscience before God, and to provide a way to bear witness to their communities. What was a bit less clear is the extent this measure, of itself, would shield these clergy folk or their churches from discrimination charges, given the homofascist bent toward coerced affirmation of homosexuality–regardless of any government-bestowed benefits they may claim to be pursuing from “marriage equality”. Also unclear was where this would leave divorce in the absence of a state certificate, a function the church has never administered (with the brief exception of the pre-medieval Roman Church under two sets of Co-Emperors for approximately two generations before that empire fell).

Prominent evangelical dissenters to this no-agency approach immediately protested that this is merely “grandstanding” and “sounding retreat” on the Church’s engagement in the public square, surrendering the moral influence over marriage definition without a fight. Ryan Anderson, of the Heritage Foundation said that this retreat was “premature”. Other Christian leaders, such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Matt Staver, of the Liberty Counsel called for no retreat, but civil disobedience among the men of God, to the point of being jailed if need-be, to defend against the religious freedom violations that could be expected to accompany the judicially-mandated sodomization of civil marriage .

Standerinfamilycourt would like to suggest that a further motive underlies the dissent of the objectors to separating matrimony at the altar from the increasingly meaningless civil certificate available down at the courthouse. One of the online commenters to the mildly dissenting First Things article dated November 22, 2014 put half a finger on it, as follows:

“And how are the bona fides of those seeking Holy Matrimony to be established?
Is there a proposal to establish a system of courts to give clarity on who can marry and how marriages can be annulled? Is it proposed to offer Holy Matrimony to those who have been divorced? Will there be a difference between those who have contracted a marriage in a religious context and those who had only a civil ceremony and what of those who have a religiously validated divorce?
Will there be some national register to help prevent bigamous marriages? Might clergy facilitating (unknowingly) bigamous marriages be seen as having a liability?” – M. R.

It’s clear that if participating churches undertook such an initiative, there would be an administrative burden entailed, including some sort of secure central data base to detect potential bigamy or polygamy, something that would not be insurmountable to accomplish. As a practical matter, though, it seems the dissenters realize that the larger issue is that churches cannot and will not be able to administer divorce and should not administer annulment. Which brings us to the history of how and why the Church’s role marrying people got handed over to the civil authorities in the first place….

One of the impetuses of the Reformation, if honesty prevails, was a desire to find a way to provide for divorce, something the Roman Catholic Church, no longer wielding civil authority following the fall of Constantinople, returned to strictly prohibiting. Annulments were administered by the Church, but were more difficult to obtain than they are today. Martin Luther and the key figures of the Reformation including Calvin kept some corrupt company in the unsavory personage of one Desiderius Erasmus, a humanist who wrote (ever so much like the serpent in the garden):

“I record my pity for people who are loosely held together by an unhappy marriage and yet would have no hope of abstaining from fornication if they were released from it. I want to secure their salvation by some means, nor have I any wish for this to happen without the consent of the church. I am no innovator.

But it is possible that the spirit of Christ may not have revealed the whole truth to the church all at once. And while the church cannot make Christ’s decrees of no effect, she can none the less interpret them as may best tend to the salvation of men, relaxing here and drawing tighter there, as time and circumstance may require.

Christ wished that all his people might be perfect, no question of divorce arising among them, and the church has endeavoured to secure this full rigour from everyone. I am no supporter of divorce. But how can you be sure that the same church, in her zeal to find a way for the salvation even of weaker brethren, may not think that this is the place for some relaxation? The Gospel is not superseded; it is adapted by those to whom its application is entrusted, so as to secure the salvation of all men. My opinion is that we are misusing the interpretation of the gospel principles, with the result that the force of its teaching in our standards of behavior is fading away. To give an example, Christ so wished his people to abstain from murder that he did not permit men to be angry. We interpret this as meaning angry without cause. Likewise Christ so wished his people to abstain from perjury that he forbade an oath of any kind. This we interpret as meaning that we must not swear without just cause. In the same way he so much wished them to abstain from divorce that he forbade it altogether. What interpretation the church can put upon this, I do not decide. I wish she could interpret it so as to promote many men’s salvation. I do not make any final proposals on this point. I leave the right of decision to the church and content myself with drawing attention to the point.” (My Dear Erasmus, pp.110-111)

With that, Bro. E went slithering off into the night without so much as taking responsibility for his own deceitful rationalizations! As a result of this corrupting influence, several heresies have been evident in the Protestant Church from its founding:

that the standard Christ set was too high for men and women to attain (rejects the power of the Holy Spirit and true regeneration).
that happiness is a much higher good than holiness.
that lowering the moral standard will result in “more” salvation (ignores 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Gal. 5:21 consequences of baptism without regeneration; fails to grasp that there’s actually no moral bottom to that strategy.)
that Jesus did not abrogate all attempts to dissolve marriage for any cause in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 16.
that identification with Christ’s death on the cross made salvation “secure” through “grace” regardless of the trajectory of one’s life afterward.

According to John Witte, Jr., Director of the Law and Religion Program, Emory University writing in the Journal of Law and Religion, Martin Luther saw civil jurisdiction over marriage law as the panacea to several evils that had emerged in Europe after Catholic canon law proved inadequate to regulate marriage in society at large, including prostitution, concubinage, clerics patronizing brothels, desertion, bigamy, incest, and the resulting backlash wherein parents were sending their sons and daughters into crowded monasteries and cloisters (“nunneries”) for escape. When we seek a solution without first seeking God’s face, the chances are good that this “solution” will not be consistent with the biblical commandments left by Jesus and Paul, hence the idea that (as Erasmus put it), “it is possible that the spirit of Christ may not have revealed the whole truth to the church all at once…….of weaker brethren, may not think that this is the place for some relaxation?“

The Church of today should have no problem following Christ in owning marriage only, for members only, and leaving marriage of the unregenerated to the state’s regulation. God’s design created only marriage and made no provision whatsoever for its dissolution. As the Manhattan Declaration (somewhat hypocritically) asserts, marriage belongs to God, not Caesar. As Jesus Christ asserted….”from the beginning, it was not so. What God has joined, let no man separate.” There is, therefore, no scriptural reason for the Church to offer any form of marriage dissolution.

Indeed, Luther handed marriage over to the legislation of the German state, and other Reformation figures did likewise in their own countries, because had they not done so, divorce would never have become available to satisfy this emerging Erasmean philosophy. For the reverse reason, today’s dissenting voices to the Marriage Pledge are in no hurry to recover accountable stewardship of holy matrimony from the increasingly unaccountable hands of Caesar. Most realize that to do so would necessitate Church acceptance that original marriage is indissoluble as Jesus Christ said it was, and that (therefore) remarriage where there is a living estranged spouse, is in all cases adultery, as Jesus made unquestionably clear was the case. (The scriptural authority for this is beyond the scope of this blog, but can be read at this link. )

It would be immoral for the Church to get into the divorce business, and impractical to administer willful sinfulness that attempted marriage dissolution represents. The Church would need to start teaching that if there is no civil marriage for the state to “dissolve”, the tax benefits should be less important than the generational and eternal benefits of rendering the secular state powerless to intrude on a marriage at the behest of only one spouse, and teach members to take seriously the threat to final salvation that unrepented remarriage adultery brings.

Further, the Church need not delve into or pass judgment on the circumstances behind any prior divorce in those who want an ecclesiastical wedding, as the commenter suggested above, if she simply submits faithfully to the judgment of Christ, repeated at least twice by Him: whosoever marries a [person] who has been put away commits [ongoing] adultery. Since the latter does not constitute a valid marriage in God’s eyes, taking back from the state her jurisdiction over only the marriage that God recognizes, is greatly simplified for the Church by obeying Him. For the same reason, the only inquiry that need be made of prior civil marriages is whether or not the prior spouse on either side is deceased (easily verifiable through public civil records at the outset, and a central data base thereafter). Weddings recorded under God’s law would simply no longer take place in the Church unless neither proposed spouse was still married in God’s eyes to anyone else. This would immediately clear the Church of all related hypocrisy charges and restore her witness overnight. The Church, after correcting heretical teaching concerning “biblical grounds” for divorce (i.e. neither adultery, nor dissertion, but solely and exclusively repentance from a biblically unlawful marriage according to Luke 16:18), would then leave it to the Holy Spirit to convict individual members whether they should consider dissolving unbiblical remarriages undertaken ignorantly due to decades of widespread false teaching. Churches should further emphasize ongoing celibacy after exiting the biblically-adulterous union or reconciliation with the true spouse for those who dissolve adulterous remarriages.

There are some churches already experimenting with the reform of finding alternatives to civil marriage who were earlier motivated by the abusive unilateral divorce system which is (or should be considered) wholly incompatible with faithful church doctrine. They advise people on matters such as property holding alternatives and other alternative means of leveraging their marital status without a civil marriage license. These marriages are likely to be treated as common law marriages for state purposes including child welfare. As mentioned earlier, it is unclear whether such an approach would provide any cover from LGBT activists who might potentially sue or bring discrimination charges attacking a thoroughly biblical definition of marriage according to Matt. 19:4-6. The reliance in that regard would be on the Lord’s protection, resulting from prayer and obedience.

[disclaimer: In providing the link reference above, SIFC does not endorse Pastor Matt Trewhella’s assertion: “God intended the State to have jurisdiction over a marriage for two reasons – 1). in the case of divorce, and 2). when crimes are committed i.e., adultery, bigamy. etc.” There is actually no biblical support for the secular state to have any jurisdiction over holy matrimony or to dissolve what He forbids to be dissolved – render unto God what is God’s. ]

The solutions suggested above are for reforming and purifying holy matrimony among the spiritually regenerated within the Church. Just as marriage is a covenant, it relies on the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, where He told us that His law would be written in our hearts. One irony of the Reformation is that few of its leaders truly served Christ and were regenerated in that way. Some endorsed polygamy by letter to the royal family when the occasion arose, and Luther was terribly anti-Semitic, later inspiring Hitler. As can be readily seen from the major writings, they thought that dismissing the moral law as seemed necessary for inclusion of sinners into the church (sound familiar?) would save them. Holding them to an “appearance” of morality without the Holy Spirit actually changing their hearts was imagined to be redemptive. The Catholic canon law was ineffective in bringing morality to the unregenerated largely because the Roman Church had a history since the days of the Emperor Constantine of taking almost the same approach, deeming people to earn salvation once included, and be sanctified by Church rites. Yet historical tracking of the results of Luther’s family law “reforms” show they yielded only a further slide in public morality.

The evils Martin Luther was seeking to address are very real and very likely to recur when the civil law is inherently immoral, both in its structure and in its delivery system. One could argue that the majority of those evils prevail under today’s “no-fault” regime (with the possible exception of shipping our youth off to monastic life to escape the resulting prevalence of societal immorality).

Civil law is therefore needed for the larger unregenerated segment of society who are not under grace, who cannot claim inclusion in the New Covenant whereby God’s law is written on the heart. However, civil law that discriminates between the Petitioner and the Respondent in protecting fundamental rights is as corrosive as anarchy. The Bill of Rights should protect the non-offending Respondent to the full extent that the system gives preference to the Petitioner regardless of the latter’s own hostile acts against the marriage. Enormous taxpayer burden results from the current failure of most state divorce laws to hold the at-fault party financially responsible. Liberal interests lately are eager to point to statistics that imply that the divorce rate is slowing or levelling off, and this is likely to be used to rationalize continued non-reform. However, a careful analysis of the data shows that unilateral divorce is growing most among couples married more than 30 years, and this is unexpectedly threating the retirement security of many due to the unconscionable features of the “no-fault” regime. Unilateral divorce also continues to drag down the marriage rates in many countries in favor of unmarried cohabitation, which has been proven to be very dangerous to the safety of any children involved.

The demand for homosexual “marriage” would simply not exist if the law held heterosexual marriage commitments binding merely to the extent that it protects business partnerships or commercial contracts. The fact that none of the political activism by the Christian Right over the past 30 years has been directed toward ending such an immoral and unconstitutional travesty is very telling, as contrasted with the massive efforts exerted to oppose abortion and “Wave Two” of marriage redefinition. If the U.S. Supreme Court does unilaterally impose homosexual marriage on all 50 states, a shift of focus to this neglected accountability could provide the silver lining that might restore God’s full definition of marriage a generation from now. If so, demand for deviant forms of marriage that cannot be easily and cheaply escaped would dry up in due time.

The banana in the jar represents a fallacious claim to a pseudo-biblical “exception clause” that is easily and overwhelmingly disproven by the application of disciplined, widely accepted principles of basic hermeneutics, which for some odd reason, tend to be suspended for this particular topic by evangelical Pharisees so hopelessly infatuated with Matthew 19:9. Will the monkey let go of the banana and break free of the jar when worldly persecution sets in– or shamelessly hold on tighter?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, marriage, morality

Before We Start Our Book Series: WHO Owns / Defines / Dissolves Marriage?

April 24, 2015 standerinfamilycourt 2 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court will enter their chamber for perhaps the most pivotal day in the nation’s modern history. It will be a day when we will either decide nationally to yield to God’s law or continue to rebel against it, and quite possibly find ourselves running out of opportunities to repent and restore our nation. “Standerinfamilycourt” is so grateful to have had the opportunity to kneel and pray with 10,000 other believers in front of the Supreme Court building on March 26, 2013, the last time marriage redefinition / defense-of-marriage arguments were heard. The Lord could have delivered us in 2013 and spared us of the national catastrophe of having the very separation-of-powers so basic to upholding our Constitution totally break down due to our national thirst for ever-increasing immorality and universal sexual license.

Putting it bluntly, marriage redefinition was established in the U.S. with the stroke of Ronald Reagan’s pen on September 5, 1969. Instead of speaking out, marching, fasting and praying as we’ve done against the sodomization of marriage, the Church got comfortable with the resulting system of consecutive polygamy. That tragically, through the removal of God’s hand of divine favor and protection, put an end to the days wherein state, local and Federal governments could balance their budgets, protect national borders, elect national leadership that was both competent and virtuous at the same time, win wars, assimilate its immigrants or accomplish much of anything else that used to mark us as a nation under God. We totally forgot that an offended God was watching (and was being overly patient with us).

The enactment of unilateral divorce and legalized adultery also contributed to the destruction of another great empire, the Roman Empire, and it occurred within two generations of enactment. Why should we expect that God would be more patient with us than He was with the Byzantine-Rome co-emperors?

In the 16th century, Martin Luther and several other key figures of the Reformation set in motion the circumstances we find ourselves in today. We love to say in the evangelical church, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s”. We love to assert that God defines and owns marriage. In 2009, the Manhattan Declaration was offered up for the signatures of well over half a million signers, also boldly saying this. SIFC was among the first 100,000 signers, and proudly so. Yet, many evangelicals celebrate that Martin Luther and his cohort deliberately yielded the legal ownership of “that which belongs to God” over to civil government. Ironically, today’s leading voices in the evangelical church are highly reluctant to take it back, even though civil government has proven to be such a poor steward of the sacred trust called holy matrimony. It seems the Church, which has grown so corrupt in the last 45 years since enactment of unilateral divorce, is also nowhere near ready in its unrepentant state to resume stewardship or accountability, because doing so will demand that they deal with the immoral dissolution of what Jesus said was indissoluble, and also with the righteous dissolution of that which Jesus unequivocally said was ongoing adultery (Luke 16:18).

Taking marriage back from the state, for example, by clergy refusing to sign off on state marriage certificates, will ultimately mean they will have to also accept accountability for dealing with the God-forbidden dissolution of original marriage, which in reality is the only authentic form of holy matrimony, according to the teaching of Jesus. There’s no question that any legalization of homosexual “marriage” is only going to hasten the decline in heterosexual demand for civil marriage already designed by civil libertarians as part and parcel of the enactment of unilateral divorce. The civil “piece of paper” is substantially-devalued versus 1969, save for tax benefits, and is further losing value with each iteration of social engineering.

As we all know, Martin Luther and his cohort took unscriptural issue with those highly unpalatable teachings of Jesus Christ, thanks to some very poor application of hermeneutics (the disciplined, scholarly rules of biblical interpretation that accompanies the assistance of the Holy Spirit). As a result, the Protestant church, with the exception of the Anabaptist tradition, was founded on a doctrine of marital heresy. As Jesus states in Rev. 2: 20, they “tolerate that woman, Jezebel“!

Martin Luther, and most other Protestant church leaders, are or were adherents of what author Milton T. Wells, a former president of the Eastern Bible Institute in the 1950’s, called the “Five Word School” of liberal divorce theology, which arbitrarily chooses to center their divorce and remarriage rationalizing doctrine around a misinterpretation of Matthew 19:9, instead of the much clearer passage, Luke 16:18 which already is consistent with the vast body of additional scripture on the matter. Today, this heresy is broadly considered “orthodox” across the Protestant Church despite its open contradiction of the vast body of scripture that speaks to the contrary, including the accounts of two probable eyewitnesses of Christ’s actual teaching, Luke (who traveled and ministered with Paul), and Mark (who became Peter’s right-hand man).

In 1957, when Dr. Wells first authored this book, “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?” he complained of a civil divorce rate that was approaching 25% some 12 years ahead of the enactment of unilateral divorce in the first of the fifty states. He lamented that the divorce rate in the church was approaching the divorce rate outside of the church. He made some eerily prophetic additional statements that page fans are going to have to read the installments to discover. Dr. Wells finished his race and was promoted to heaven in 1975, never conceiving that even the front end of God’s definition of marriage (Matt. 19:4) would be hanging in the balance 40 years after his death, as he grieved over the relentless attacks on the back end (Matt. 19:6) that inspired his disciplined, scholarly examination of the hermeneutics of Protestant doctrine on the indissolubility of original marriage, and the utter illegitimacy in God’s eyes of remarriage while an estranged covenant spouse is still living.

Anyone can find an out-of-print book that has passed into the public domain that agrees with their particular stance on a topic. Why choose this one? It happens that this blogger’s pastor is big on hermeneutics, and getting the flock to dig deeply into scripture; to emulate the “Bereans” of Acts 17. His sermon series on this is called “Killing the Sacred Cows (of scripture)”, but his student would dub this particular application of what she’s learned, “Sacrificing the Prize Bull” (pun fully intended). Indeed, today the average disciple without a theology degree, who craves the truth, has access to amazing online bible study tools such as interlinear language translation guides and cultural references. The silver lining of our challenging age is that the day is drawing to a rapid close when scriptural heresies can continue to propagate because the layperson can’t know any better! This blogger had just discovered those tools when another pastor friend pointed her to this book. By the time the reader is two chapters in, it becomes obvious that this book is a scholarly, disciplined hermeneutic treasure. Even if it were not, it would be well worth reading just for the rich church history within.

This book is excellent but not perfect. Dr. Wells is visionary in recognizing the irrevocability of the biblical one-flesh relationship, that it is exclusively and supernaturally formed by God in joining husband and wife of youth or widowhood, and that it is entirely absent from unscriptural remarriage because it accompanies sexual union (rather than arising from it). He is every bit as clear and unequivocal as Jesus was that physical death alone dissolves “that which GOD has joined”, not civil divorce, not adultery, not abandonment, and not subsequent civil marriage, nor children born into an adulterous union. He rigorously proves it in a way that would equip a lay person to go confidently toe-to-toe with an errant theologian. He expertly dispatches the other two of the trio of abused scriptures, Deut. 24:1-4 and 1 Cor. 7:15, that make up the evangelical Asherah Pole of “sanctified” serial polygamy.

In my view, his book has a couple of serious flaws that nevertheless don’t take anything away from the importance of his work. I believe these flaws are largely in context with the time in which Dr. Wells lived and worked, but not entirely. Dr. Wells has counterparts today who reach substantially the same scriptural conclusions, such as Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon of the Pittsburg Theological Seminary, and Dr. John Piper, recently retired senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN, and founder of the ministry DesiringGod. Like Drs. Gagnon and Piper, who freely assert in their writings the scriptural truth that remarriage while an estranged covenant spouse is still living creates a state of ongoing adultery in the eyes of God, Dr. Wells stops short of advocating that such unions be civilly dissolved in order for repentance to be completed by full reconciliation with the wronged covenant spouse, and restoration of the covenant marriage for the sake of the generations of that family, and for the sake of witness to everyone around them. Unlike Drs. Gagnon and Piper, Dr. Wells is quite forceful in stating with sound scriptural evidence that adulterous civil remarriages imperil real souls and that repentance from that state demands more than heart-felt sorrow and fidelity to the biblically-adulterous relationship. Even so, Dr. Wells comes off as such a lover of eternal souls that had he lived long enough to see the obvious double-standard that would arise with the adoption of sodomous civil “marriage” that sometimes claims spouses and children from covenant marriages, or had he lived long enough to witness the spectacle of heterosexual spouses being enabled to cheaply and unilaterally dissolve a succession of marriages without just cause and without economic consequence, one gets the sense that he would have taken a much stronger position. (There is subtle evidence in the text that there was some measure of disagreement between himself and the Assemblies of God General Superintendant who wrote the Foreword to his book.)

Dr. Wells also didn’t live long enough to see the birth and explosive growth of the covenant marriage standers’ movement in response to the ravages of unilateral divorce, which increasingly can hit after decades of successful Christian marriage. There is a very high marriage restoration rate with this group, which necessitates, by the hand of God, exactly what these reticent pastors are so loath to see, the dissolution of adulterous unions as a first step of true repentance, and divine arrangements that generally are not toxic to the children involved within the family of God. This development is very similar to the ex-gay move of God (and is treated by the current wayward church in similar fashion as the LGBT community treats the latter). They are arguing with God Himself.

Dr. Wells’ scholarly work is vitally, important, as is Dr. Gagnon’s more recent rebuttal of Dr. David Instone-Brewer (a classic contemporary member of the disingenuous “Five-Word School”). Until the Church is able to broadly grasp the hard truth that remarriage adultery is defiance of Jesus Christ that dooms real souls to the risk of hearing (along with the legion of pastors who perform such ceremonies): “you are a goat, not a sheep: depart from me, I never knew you”, we have little chance of the church getting politically behind the repeal of unilateral divorce, as it should do. As it stands now, the Assemblies of God has archived this book of truth, while heinously revising their official position paper to reflect the unscriptural teaching of the “Five-Word School”, and requiring their pastors to perform adulterous remarriages where the denomination policy used to disfellowship pastors just 42 years ago who did so.

Introduction: “DOES DIVORCE DISSOLVE MARRIAGE” by Rev. / Dr. Milton T. Wells.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Equal Protection, Prayer, Religious freedom

No Day in Court for (Stander) “Jane Doe” – Our Story, Part 4

December 4, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 3 Comments

An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.

Proverbs 31

by Standerinfamilycourt

The two-year ride through the Illinois family court system may be nearly over for Standerinfamilycourt, several months ahead of our scheduled appeal docket date. On December 2, 2014, the 2nd District Court of Appeals denied our appealed motion for anonymity to bring our religious freedom and equal protection challenge to Illinois’ unilateral divorce law, just as the trial judge had done back in August. Our constitutional attorneys have confirmed that this denial cannot be appealed any higher. This very important matter was firmly in God’s sovereign hands all along, and it was the subject of much prayer, both mine and that of our small band of supporters in this cause. God’s people are right to obediently show up dressed for battle, but we must never lose sight that the battle belongs to the Lord, as does all choice of weapons and timing for the battle.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8

Why was anonymity so important? Doesn’t the public have a “right to know”? In this case, probably so. A consulting firm which employs an emotionally ill man in a very responsible position, seeks new clients who will rely on this firm’s fiduciary integrity over $ million+ long-term contracts. That firm allowed this principal to install a girlfriend under his direct supervision, and at least two blood relatives into jobs in the firm, possibly ahead of other more qualified people. It further allowed per diem payments for lavish trips, and short-sightedly did not care that its employment policies were not only destructive to the families of its employees, but it tolerated illegal sexual harassment discriminatory to the rest of its employees in condoning and knowingly facilitating a known boss / subordinate adulterous relationship for many years. SIFC is an employee of the sort of client who might hire such a consulting firm, and in fact, her employer is a chief competitor of this firm’s main energy industry client. If SIFC can simply go to Bing and type in the first and last name of this regional business director who manages very important international engagements, and bring up all the sordid facts about this firm and that consultant in a published appeals case opinion that provocatively challenged the constitutionality of a long-standing state law, she might well advise her employer to steer clear and find an alternative vendor who manages their business with far less drama. Such is indeed the public’s right to know, and such are the facts already captured in the trial transcripts.

That said, I love my Lord who unconditionally loves both of us as one person, and I unconditionally love my life companion of more than 40 years. I have no desire whatsoever to be out of alignment with either of them, unless my beloved is out of alignment with his Lord. According to God’s clear word, SIFC remains the one-flesh covenant wife of this emotionally tormented man until God’s divorce parts us (God spells divorce “D-E-A-T-H”) . By God’s design, nothing happens to this petitioner husband of mine that does not directly happen to the one-flesh wife of his youth, regardless of anything the civil authorities will ever have to say on the matter. Nothing happens to us as a covenant couple that does not impact the lives of everyone close to us: extended family members on both sides of the family, employers, friends and neighbors. Which brings us to why anonymity was important in asserting this constitutional challenge in a godly way, if that indeed remains the Lord’s assignment for this time:

It would cover my distraught husband’s “nakedness” while he is haplessly under Satan’s control (Genesis 9:20-23)
It would be merciful, allowing him an avenue to return to walking with the Lord, without immense public humiliation to live down when God’s discipline eventually catches up
It would be equally merciful to his adulterous and extortionist partner whom the court record reflects received massive cash payments from my husband
It would protect innocent family members who became ensnared in my prodigal’s elaborately sinful scheming
It would avoid the appearance of vengeful or materialistic motives on my part in making a name for myself which would be a poor public witness for this much larger godly cause impacting our entire state, and possibly the nation

Job #1 for any Christ-follower who has been given a covenant life partner, is to unconditionally love, to fast and to pray that partner all the way through this life and into the Kingdom of God – period. Every other pursuit is secondary and human divorce decrees are totally irrelevant to that mission. We will all stand before a Holy God who will ask us, how did you steward the gifts I gave you, including the most important one, that husband or wife with whom you were joint heirs of My Kingdom and with whom you were made by ME one-flesh during your life walk? Since we’ve been empowered by the Holy Spirit in a way that transcends time, distance and circumstances, with a holy authority that outranks civil authority, and since all of the host of heaven is fighting on the side of defending our covenant marriages, He is not going to accept as an alibi that some civil judge, with no Kingdom authority whatsoever over what God divinely and permanently joined, has somehow excused me from His assignment just by writing out a sham human dissolution order that means nothing before His throne.

SIFC has repeatedly found throughout this legal journey that being restoration-minded, as God’s ways require, is totally incompatible with functioning under the unilateral divorce regime, even with Christian lawyers. Even its godliest legal practitioners cannot seem to get their heads around maintaining truly biblical behavior and motivations in this profoundly wicked realm. The very best of them truly fear what failure to submit to the thuggish web of state-sanctioned lies will do to their clients’ cases. In this instance, my Christian attorney and his associates felt compelled to file his motion to proceed under fictitious name claiming in that document that I “feared political backlash” from those who support the continuation of no-fault grounds and who favor continuation of the tyrannical public policy banning marital fault as a basis in settling property and custody disputes, rather than pleading the true family preservation reasons I have just stated. I will always wonder whether the outcome might have been different if my attorney had simply filed his motion petition with the truth concerning my motives. “She does her husband good and not evil all the days of her life.” What if my Christian attorneys had had the integrity to truly speak for me with the mind of Christ in that legal motion?

I hope that sharing my learnings through this legal journey will help people understand more about what is keeping such an immoral and unconstitutional family law regime so deeply entrenched in our system of “justice”, and how very much the idolatry of doing so is costing us as a nation. As time marches on, a growing percentage of us have never known any other way! Many presume that a law that has gone unchallenged for so long must be inherently right. Indeed, it takes the lens of God’s word to truly appreciate all that’s wrong. Many whose consciences tell them they should be challenging this immoral and unconstitutional singling out of a disfavored class of citizens, unfortunately fear men more than they fear God. All of the powerful gatekeepers (judges, legislators and attorneys on both sides) are members of the legal community who economically benefit from it at the expense of all of the rest of society. Goliath continues to taunt God’s people and there appears to be no champion in the land to ask His anointing on a stone and a slingshot to bring this giant down. The expected champions, those national organizations who faithfully take on every other political threat to the traditional family and to every other form of religious freedom violation, quake in fear or denial on the sidelines when it comes to this particular Goliath. Jesus rightly said we cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.

If I am unable to bring my case without destroying my life partner of over 40 years, how long until God raises up another David with the same reverence for holy matrimony, sufficient finances and zeal for God’s kingdom? Under those circumstances, I have to have faith that nobody is indispensable, and I have offered my God everything I have in this effort, except the irreplaceable soul of my covenant husband which is, and which must remain, my very first priority and responsibility.

“Jane Doe” was not only fighting for the integrity of her own family, but for the families and for the fundamental 14th Amendment rights of all innocent contesting Respondents as a class: Jack , Jill and Joe Doe, in bringing a constitutional challenge to a blatantly unconstitutional law. As the politically powerful homosexual movement demonstrated over the past year, actions need to be replicated in many (perhaps not all) states for unilateral divorce in our democratic nation to fall into the dustbin of perverse human history , where it undeniably belongs.

As individual Christ-followers, we are told we must follow Jesus in emptying ourselves of our individual “rights”. So how does this biblical wisdom “square” with asserting legal rights in the family court system as I and some other lone-wolf believers before me have sought to do? I think it helps to take one step back from our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and hear what these documents say about all liberty and all justice being given by God as His gift and as a purposeful privilege. Jesus said, “to whom much has been given, much is required.” What we think of as fundamental rights can actually be revoked if abused by selfish motives, or if left unprotected through cowardice or slothfulness (i.e. prayerlessness, thanklessness and personal moral compromise) in how we defend them. The possibility of revocation makes these things divine privileges, more so than rights with responsibilities attached, in sharp contrast to the way most of us have become accustomed to thinking of our constitutional rights.

As providence would have it, the day I received the notice from the Appellate Court denying our anonymity motion, I came home to my devotion book published by Revive Our Hearts, Nancy Leigh DeMoss’ ministry to women, True Woman Manifesto – the chapter next up was Day 11: Selfish Insistence on Personal Rights ( is contrary to the spirit of Christ who humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant, and laid down His life for me.) This devotion further challenged:

“Have you been acting more like a temporary servant of God or like His willing and permanent slave?” Being honest with myself, I journaled: “the idea of being a permanent slave, unentitled to the personal fruit of my time, treasure and talent is haunting and chilling to me. Help me, Lord!”

On the one hand, many years of experience with the Lord has shown me He never fails to restore what the enemy has stolen, and in fact heretofore has always restored it in a multiple! That is not the issue for me. The issue is being willing to lay down all the research, financial sacrifice, suffering and risk to my own family, to wait and pray while God accomplishes this momentous state-wide and national task His way. The issue is continuing to have faith while being humbled and possibly obscured for now.

This devotion reflected on the writings of Elisabeth Elliot, widow of missionary Jim Elliot, both graduates of nearby Wheaton College, who was murdered with several colleagues on the mission fields in Ecuador. Nancy Leigh DeMoss writes:

‘What are some of the rights that as Jesus’ disciples we need to be willing to surrender? Here’s the list that Elisabeth Elliot came up with:

First is the right to take revenge (Romans 12:19-20). (if not against my husband, perhaps against the judge who brutally punished me for my convictions?)
The right to have a comfortable, secure home. Jesus said, “The birds of the air have nests, the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:57-58). The right to have a comfortable, secure home. It’s a right we surrender to Christ.
The right to spend our money however we please (Matthew 6:19-21).
The right to hate an enemy (Matthew 5:43-48). We have to surrender that right.
The right to be honored and served (Mark 10:42-47).
The right to understand God’s plan before we obey (Hebrews 11:8).
The right to live life by our own rules (John 14:23-24).
The right to hold a grudge (Colossians 3:13).
The right to fit into society (Romans 12:2; Galatians 1:10).
The right to do whatever feels good (Galatians 5:16-17; 1 Peter 4:2).
The right to complain. “Ooo. I can’t have the right to complain? ” No. That’s a right you’re to give up. By the way, you find that in Philippians 2, verse 14: “Do all things without complaining or murmuring.”
The right to put self first. That’s the passage we’ve been looking in, Philippians 2:3-4).
The right to express one’s sexuality in ways that are contrary to the ways of God (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
The right to rebel against authority (1 Peter 2:13-15). Acceptable to do so only where there is a clear conflict with God’s law.
The right to sue another believer (1 Corinthians 6:1-8).

(SIFC was summoned into court in this instance because as a follower of Christ she refused to sign a document that affirmed the civil charge of “irreconcilable differences” even though doing so might have protected more of our family’s [in reality, God’s] assets.)

The right to end a disappointing marriage (Matthew 5:31-32). ‘

There’s more we could say about all those, but just a sample list from God’s Word of rights that we’re asked to surrender as followers of Christ. – Nancy Leigh DeMoss, www.reviveourhearts.com.

Being a student of the bible, I know it is not acceptable to God to shrink back in fear from a God-appointed battle. I also observe from the ill-fated battles of the bible that complete obedience is required in all aspects of a God-favored battle: timing, tools, size of army, willingness to accept seemingly impossible circumstances and trust God, instead of our own resources, to overcome unfavorable circumstances and obstacles for His glory.

2 Chronicles 14:11

Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said, “Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.”

Though I was by now pleading with the Lord to write His instructions on my wall, I still felt as though I was not getting any clear answer from Him whether to pursue or drop the appeal without the anonymity protection for our family. I had (perhaps wrongly) treated this anonymity item as a Gideon-style “fleece”. Was God spanking me for not having more spiritual maturity after 35 years of walking with Him, or was this His actual revelation according to that extended “fleece”? I had no peace with either pursuing the appeal under our actual names for the sake of the people of our state and all that has been invested, nor with dropping it for the sake of our family’s peace, privacy and recovery. So, I located a comprehensive study of all the biblical battles, their issues and outcomes, and I spent a couple of days studying it, hoping for more clarity. To get inside the skin of another long-sacrificing soldier of Christ with a similarly monumental task of marshalling an army to change both internal church culture and government policy on a profoundly vital moral and human rights issue on which the future of nations turned – ending the African slave trade, I dove into Eric Metaxas’ biography of William Wilberforce, called Amazing Grace. Could some of Wilberforce’s processes be applicable to my approach to this hard decision, and more specifically, to my discipleship path in this?

One passage in this Wilberforce biography seemed jump out and grab me, standerinfamilycourt, by the throat:

“And so he took stock of himself. He well knew his mind’s natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose — indeed, he called it his ‘butterfly mind’…..He knew that his world-class wit could turn into the vicious and wounding sarcasm, and that his ability to mimic others and joke and sing and generally be charming could be used to merely draw attention to himself, merely to exalt himself and to feed his personal and vain ambitions….Wilberforce alone knew how constitutionally weak he was with regard to self-discipline…”

Ouch! It’s encouraging to reflect that God with whom nothing shall be impossible still found a way to astoundingly use such an inherently flawed vessel! When I went on to read about the elaborate and regimented tracking lists Wilberforce used to hold himself accountable for correcting these flaws, I sincerely wonder if I could stay at it for long. Is that the bottom-line cost of success in an endeavor so much bigger than can be handled in the natural?

In the meantime, some external events transpired that were very encouraging, making it very clear that others are forcefully carrying this banner alongside me. Our facebook community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional has rapidly gained international followers, including a couple of like-minded U.S. state and national organizations, despite its intensely unpopular cultural message. By the hand of God, one re-post of Dr. Albert Mohler’s 2010 blog on the hypocrisy within the church’s official position on divorce and remarriage which sharply conflicts with what Jesus taught, was directed into the strategic hands of some seminary theologians and a group of Catholics who care about this subject. It has been re-shared 21 times in 5 days as I write this, and has had over 8,000 views, with dozens of thoughtful debate comments by important people that seemed to take on a life of its own. Other posts are also getting large audiences and great feedback very suddenly. I made personal connection with no-fault opposition pioneer Judith Brumbaugh, who has extended us the honor of her helpful background guidance for which we are so grateful. Perhaps most significantly, standers from all over are beginning to message our page for prayer and guidance.

With all the praise and the thanks to God, the Illinois legislative session miraculously adjourned without passing the deplorable bill HB1452, or the ERA (equal rights amendment) bill. Both would have been monumental threats to Illinois families. Many prayers went up across the state for their defeat, and God was faithful.

Last month, the Catholic-leaning religious magazine First Things started an excellent debate on whether pastors should continue to sign off on civil marriage certificates, or should force a godly separation between God-joined biblical unions and the world’s severely-devalued civil constructions brought on by nearly 5 decades of destructive redefinition. Additionally, they published the excellent article, Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce, by Drs. Thomas F. Farr and Hilary Towers. The article very significantly validated what the national religious freedom legal organizations are so reluctant to acknowledge: that divorce Respondents do suffer genuine religious persecution in the family court system, (as all perceived opponents of the sexual revolution do). Perhaps it’s this group of Catholics through whom our post was circulated so wildly beyond our expectations this past week. Did some influential people get a good look at our pages and think concretely about a potential alliance? It is very comforting at a time like this and on the cusp of such a pivotal personal choice that I have to make to see God’s hand and some strong evidence that all of this is part of a larger move of God in which I may not have to be a very significant player nor the lone voice in the wilderness. May God give me the mix of humility and ambition that is most appropriate here, since I’ve lost all hope of a “cloak”, and only He can see the larger picture ahead. May He direct my thoughts and my steps!

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court is reportedly going to decide whether to hear arguments in cases that upheld state constitutions in their voter-approved traditional marriage definitions coming out of the 6th Circuit which conflict with rulings in several other Federal Circuits around the country. Some of those rulings and cases assert the fundamental right to remain married. What is the sustainability of unilateral divorce if the Supreme Court affirms the fundamental right to maintain civil marriage intact? SIFC was on the Washington Mall with 10,000 other traditional marriage supporters on the chilly day in March, 2013 when the first round of marriage definition arguments were heard during the March for Marriage sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage. No doubt there will be a similar rally organized in 2015 on the date of these new arguments. The speeches SIFC heard that day from inner city pastors and the young adult children of divorce galvanized this stander’s resolve that unilateral divorce must be abolished. SIFC is likely to be there again.

Yesterday I mailed off to the attorneys an envelope containing the case history and analysis I researched on prior constitutional challenges to no-fault divorce laws in various states since 1970, and a glossary of legal concepts that have been impacted by very recent cases. After much prayer I’ve come to the place where I will not feel any peace about dropping the appeal until my Christian attorneys have reviewed this work and also sought God’s direction specifically concerning the 14th Amendment equal protection and due process aspects of the case. If our attorneys are willing, I will find the funding somehow for this round of the appeal, but if we win that, God will have to step in and provide the finances to go up against the deep state pockets we would then be facing. If they discourage me from this aspect of the case, and I can’t find a suitable legal team, it is unlikely I’m going to be comfortable putting my family through any further litigation rigors. Prayer warriors reading this post, SIFC would be so grateful if you would pray for our family and our two law firms.

Even with dropping the appeal, the Lord will have other, slower avenues to work toward the goal of ending the tyranny in the family court system. I am confident He is about to raise up further opportunities for challenge across the country. Important alliances are being formed in the background, and I see SIFC’s pages as a linkage between people and needed resources in the future. I see these pages as a continuing resource for committed Christ-followers in having the difficult conversations within their churches and denominations to begin to change the culture much the way the abolitionists slowly changed the culture in Wilberforce’s time. Perhaps with the social media resources we now have and the Lord’s end times timeline, the process will be much more rapid. We’ve seen the meteoric speed with which evil social change can sweep the nation in the past 5 years. Yet the word of God says “greater is He that is in us, than he who is in the world.”

Until the hearts of the leadership of the state family policy councils and of the Christian public service legal funds change to embrace our cause legislatively and judicially, I have a vision for starting a fund that will help people in other states in the appeal stage who have been bullied for their convictions by the family court system. I don’t have any idea how I’m going to accomplish this just yet, but I know Who must be the Provider. While we probably can’t afford to fund primary divorce challenges, there are some legal aid groups who may be able to fill that role, and perhaps knowing such resources may be available at the appeal stage may encourage individuals to do as I’ve done in challenging the “irreconcilable differences” civil charge in order to gain standing to bring a 14th Amendment constitutional appeal in other states. Perhaps the presence of an appeal fund may reform the egregious behavior of the legal community including the bench.

Meanwhile, I challenge the state family policy councils, and indeed the many Christian denominations at headquarters level – what are you willing to do to be a godly voice on the offensive in changing these laws? Will you trust God enough to risk offending some donors or losing some members ? When your next meeting comes to debate the cultural “relevance” of your official position statements on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage, will you honor God and move back toward scriptural purity and eternal relevance?

I challenge the religious liberty legal funds whose mission statements all say they defend the “traditional family”: same sex marriage is going to be a waning issue by next year, and there are credible reports that some of you are already feeling it in reduced coffers. Honor the One you should be looking to for those coffers, as well as for the tide to turn in court. Why not look to help the millions who would be only too willing to send in their $50 in exchange for your pledge of solid commitment to this cause, rather than appeasing larger donors out of an unexamined and untested fear that they may be offended because their lifestyles may be biblically immoral. Soon enough, everyone is going to see the obvious and unavoidable connection between unilateral divorce and same sex marriage.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands. – Ps. 90:17

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 1

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part 2

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part 3

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Let's Repeal No-Fault Divorce!