Category Archives: Prayer

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

Help – I Want to Get Out of My Adulterous Remarriage, But Can’t

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  – 1 John 4:1

The moment a blogger attempts to rescue perishing souls and dares to connect the cultural soul-poison of remarriage adultery with its biblical eternal outcome (“do not be deceived, no adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God” – 1 Cor. 6:9), it amounts to nothing less than kicking satan’s hornet nest in mid-summer.  Trust us, satan fights hard to control and manipulate those souls – often doing so by fear of doom!

Once hardened to the straightforward protests because the focus is unwaveringly on souls, the evil one will regroup to bring on challenges that also attempt to challenge our compassion here at
“7 Times Around the Jericho Wall.”    A couple of those potent challenges can be seen in the comments to one blog post from about a year ago:
“HOW DO I KNOW WHETHER GOD JOINED MY FIRST MARRIAGE?”

Typically, the person bringing the challenge truly does have circumstances where there are enormous, and even dire barriers to ceasing to cohabit with a faux spouse as a necessary element of true repentance.    In other situations, the person is merely impersonating such a person in a truly sick attempt to discredit God’s word, and to discredit any such ministry by challenging the compassion of both.  From where this blogger sits, discerning between these types of encounters doesn’t always come easy – and we’ve been at this for almost seven years now.

In this post, some of the common characteristics of this kind of challenge will first be explored, for discernment purposes.
Then, a few generic, practical suggestions for this sort of impossible situation will be at least offered – which may or may not “land”  well, depending upon one’s true heart condition.    We shall then finish off by connecting the advice in this post with the new geopolitical reality that landed on January 20, 2021 in the United States.

Characteristics of a typical “compassion” challenger (in no particular order):

(1) they insist they have no options to physically exit an illicit living arrangement  (no money, no health, no friends, no relations, can’t afford a lawyer,  noncovenant dependent children, etc.)

(2) they are persistent if they don’t get the answer from this blog site that they hoped for, making repetitive arguments numerous times.

(3) their inquiry typically makes apparent that they haven’t read the blog post they are challenging, or its related links very thoroughly.

(4) they insist they have been praying about their situation for quite some time, and God has been silent, so they need an urgent answer from us.  They openly assert that they expect us to peer into their heart and speak for God, or the consequences will be dire for them.

(5) they often assert that they are living celibate in their faux marriage in a distant part of the adulterous home.    (What could be the harm in that?)

The more of these elements that are present in an inquiry, especially a redundant (“but you don’t understand my circumstances”) inquiry, the greater the suspicion that we’re really dealing with an impersonator – one of the demonic individuals bent on countering the movement who is quite deft in taking on various personas, and has many years practice at it.    Within reason, we always seek to be open in the blog comments to earnest questions, but the days do grow short, our extensive  blogsite is keyword-searchable, and any expectation that we will be such bad time stewards as to regurgitate a previous blog post in response to an individual inquiry comment is (frankly) badly misplaced.

Practical Suggestions for Exiting Immoral Cohabitation When  Resources Are Limited

When it comes to adulterous remarriages, unilateral, “no-fault” divorce, while profoundly unconstitutional, can be a good thing.  Unless one happens to live in the state of Mississippi, nobody living in the U.S. can legitimately argue that they “can’t” get a relatively cheap civil divorce because their faux spouse refuses to cooperate.   One could even reasonably argue that as of the date this past week when SCOTUS formally declined to hear the last of the many election fraud / foreign election interference cases, we now have to live as Christ-followers in a barbaric society that no longer has a functioning U.S. Constitution because of six  or so current justices who appear to be badly compromised – but more about that near the end of this post.

I am reminded of a top-ten ditty back in the 1970’s here, called “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”…

But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

While the context here is obviously a paperless immoral cohabitation, are these not actually the same in God’s eyes as the papered-over situation where God’s  word tells us He doesn’t recognize the paper?    Some godly, high-integrity marriage permanence pastors,  who are well-deserving of any Christ-follower’s deep respect will insist that God expects obtaining a civil divorce out of an adulterous remarriage, for “true” repentance to be complete.   I respectfully disagree, both based on the lack of such a requirement in scripture, and the logic that Jesus taught that “divorce” is strictly a tradition of men (Matthew 19:8).   In other words, there is nothing to “dissolve” in the case of adulterous remarriage, nor is it a “sin” to live reconciled with the covenant spouse of one’s youth without a second ceremony, because man’s paper did not “dissolve” that original state of holy matrimony.
This biblical fact has long been an important consideration in the event that unilateral no-fault divorce laws were ever to be appropriately judged unconstitutional and individual state laws changed to require mutual consent to “divorce”.     

Obviously in most cases, a legal dissolution and reconsecrating of covenant marriage vows in reconciliation cases is desirable, but the point is that not doing them, reconciled or unreconciled, will never keep a repenting, regenerated person out of heaven, according to scripture.    Ditto for Catholic “annulments”.
For the unreconciled, God alone sees into every heart to gauge how open a repenting person truly is to God bringing back their estranged true spouse into the holy matrimony home, which is precisely why demands or pleas that “standerinfamilycourt” give assurances of heaven based on so-called  “heart repentance” are badly misplaced.   Only God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit can ever give that kind of assurance, and only those who are regenerated (“born again”) have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, according to scripture.

To circle back around to the main point, the only biblically-based requirements for exiting an adulterous “remarriage” as a regenerated person, and being fully reconciled with God are:
(1) leave the illicit home permanently
(2) sincerely desire to be reconciled to your true spouse whether or not that appears possible, and whether or not godless society persecutes you for it.    (They probably will, and you won’t ever fool God on this one.)

Whom does scripture say should be providing for an indigent / disabled believer who believes they literally have nowhere to go if they exit their immoral cohabitation?

A big clue can be found in 1 Timothy 5:

Honor widows who are actually widows; but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to show proper respect for their own family and to give back compensation to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.  Now she who is actually a widow and has been left alone has set her hope on God, and she continues in requests and prayers night and day. But she who indulges herself in luxury is dead, even while she lives.  Give these instructions as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Obviously, back in the 1st century church, “divorcees” were nearly non-existent because the church of Jesus Christ never recognized man’s “divorce” nor “annulment”,  and God has always spelled “divorce” as follows:  D-E-A-T-H.     However, in context of today’s immorality inside and outside the church, we have a lot of figurative “widows” and “widowers” for whom the only remarriage that is legitimate is back to their covenant spouse.    It seems not unreasonable that arrangements should be made first with extended family, and failing that, with the church – including the body of other covenant marriage standers, many of whom could benefit from having a roommate while they await the repentance of their own covenant spouse.   Many of these standers will themselves have come out of an adulterous “remarriage” and have skills and space to take care of a disabled repenter.   Most disabled people in the U.S. at least qualify for some level of sustaining state and Federal benefits, including Social Security, that could help ease the financial burden on the care-giving family member or fellow stander.    Many covenant marriage standers’ groups can be found on Facebook or online web pages these days where connections can be made with solid Christian stander communities, and a few of those links will be listed at the end of this post.

As for continuing to live celibate in one’s adulterous household, this notion is quite common, in particular, with Catholic-background people where that church officially condoned this practice as part of its broader contemporary compromise of true biblical marriage indissolubility.    These folks will often say they can’t get an “annulment”,  so this is their “solution”.    There are several kingdom of God problems with this kind of “solution”.    I personally like the response a commenter recently made to this issue on the blog post linked above, though this (characteristically) didn’t satisfy the inquirer:

“We are here as witnesses to the unsaved and the world watches us – we are told in 1 Thess 5:22 to ‘abstain from all appearances of evil’ – Why would a sister be living with another sister’s husband? the ‘appearance’ still exists.

“Would you ask a sister – to live with another woman’s husband? Is that seen to the world as ‘chaste and separate’?

“God who designed marriage – also provides all the tools needed for reconciliation – ‘disabled, isolated and no income or the ability to obtain income’ – are no obstacles to God – providing you have a genuine heart to reconcile – he can and will do what you can’t – if you do what you can….”

(Amen!)

The Big Picture is Drastically Changing – For the Worse:

To close out, “standerinfamilycourt” believes strongly that the relatively-affluent and the poor alike, in this nation of the United States have a high risk of losing all or almost all of our creature comforts in the not-too-distant future, as usurped Marxist  rule makes further inroads to eliminating our national path back to a constitutional republic.     In the U.S., the extreme dysfunction and compromised state of all three branches of the Federal government (plus the military) has been exposed since the November 3, 2020 election, such that constitutional separation-of-powers are rendered almost completely inoperative, hence checks and balances on outright crime and treason in office are rendered effectively “moot”.   This sadly occurred with  the acquiescence of at least six of our nine SCOTUS justices, who likewise proved themselves unwilling to sacrifice personal comforts in order to do what’s right for the nation at a critical time.    The result is that, as one immorally-living set of top leaders replaces the next in the White House, our nation is left under illegitimate rule by those who came into office by what could justifiably be called sedition and Communist China Party purchased collusion (i.e. unprosecuted treason).    These illicit leaders have taken deliberate, unilateral actions in the first few weeks of their White House occupation to seriously break down the national defenses of our nation against these colluding foreign enemies, and we face many serious risks ranging from the “global reset” and collapsed financial currency to a widespread  attack on our electrical grid that could reportedly kill up to 90% of our population over a year’s time.

What a shame, on top of all these losses, to lose one’s soul as well, for the sake of shaky, disappearing material comforts!    Marxist regimes confiscate property at-will, and they wipe out livelihoods with the literal stroke of a pen.   They unleash bioweapons on their own people, and get rid of “the least of these” without a pang of conscience.   They deliberately go after true citizens of the kingdom of God for the way they live and for their convictions.    When God continues to allow this to happen without intervening after the normal channels fail to stop it, it’s a strong sign that His judgment on the nation is fully landing.  He is removing His hand of supernatural protection for the nation’s pervasive sexual immorality and, in particular, church leadership condoning the breakdown of the biblical family over decades of concurrent and consecutive polygamy, divorce and remarriage.  We’ve been “given over” to our own desires, and at that point, the only reversal of this sequence of events is for church leadership to reverse its course on the same.    We know this from following Israel’s history, and we can only hope that it’s not too late already!

“We have been unfaithful to our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land; yet now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.   So now let’s make a covenant with our God to send away all the wives and their children, following the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the Law.   Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, but we will be with you; be courageous and act.”

Then Ezra stood and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all Israel take an oath that they would do according to this proposal; so they took the oath.   Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. Although he went there, he did not eat bread nor drink water, because he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.   So they made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the exiles, that they were to assemble at Jerusalem,  and that whoever did not come within three days, in accordance with the counsel of the leaders and the elders, all his property would be forfeited, and he himself would be excluded from the assembly of the exiles.”  – from the Book of Ezra, chapter 10.

For this very reason our founding fathers repeatedly warned (I believe, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that we can only retain our constitutional republic through biblical morality.

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

 

Links to a few helpful covenant marriage standers sites where chaste connections can be made with other standers:

Covenant Marriage Standers (Facebook)

MADR (Facebook) 

Testimonies of Repentance from Adulterous Marriages  (Facebook)

Restoration of Christian Marriage (MarriageDivorce.com)

 

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

Are Christians Engaging in “No-Fault” Repeal Activism Sinning?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

 “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
– John 18:36

It is not unusual to encounter Christians who are  uncomfortable engaging in secular political activity of any type, even when a nation’s constitution is being existentially threatened, its children confiscated from fit parents and trafficked to abusers for the Federal money that changes hands with the state;  others of its children being legally murdered on the delivery table;  its elderly legally euthanized or starved in their bedridden state, and many other abuses of the human dignity of His image-bearers equally-horrific as these.

The more gentle-spirited of these cite teachers such as David Bercot, who argue the writings of the Early Church Fathers as evidence that Christ-followers must not presume to engage politically (especially ~ 26 minutes).

But there’s another camp.   More recently, these reservations of conscience have gone beyond reticent discomfort, to something resembling a more “pious” way to say “STFU“.     One young  know-it-all, whose tastes seem to run more to the social justice “gospel”, recently scolded “standerinfamilycourt” on our facebook page Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, as follows:

“Also, I have noticed this trend going around that i call, “tough guy preachers” where Christians are acting harshly with people who disagree with them. I have noticed that there is a common denominator with this trend- it is the Christians who have involved themselves politically to a great degree and are passionate about king Saul… I mean Trump.

“Since you all hold to the historic Christian view of divorce and remarraige (sic), I would have all of you know that the early Christians had nothing to do with politics- in fact, they flat out refused to participate in them, the military, the government, or any institution that required their participation on the systematic disobedience to Christ’s commands.

Jesus said not to turn away those who would borrow, and will send people to hell for the sin of omission when it comes to caring for those in need.

Will Jesus say to you, “depart from me” for you voting His widows and orphans out of the country?

Maybe, just maybe this divorce and remarraige (sic) issue should be secondary for you people.”

Spoken like a young man who obviously hasn’t personally experienced much extreme harshness in life, and isn’t going to be persuaded by any amount of rightly-divided biblical arguments that actual souls are on the line (too tough-guy preacherish, right?)   This fellow makes the ridiculous presumption that those who politically support national border sovereignty, and who reject the Marxist “social gospel” as the false gospel that it is, must neglect the poor in the local and world communities.   Since he lacks any actual evidence for levelling this broad-brush charge, he uses his ideology as the defacto “evidence” thereof.   Certain things, according to scripture are indeed heaven-or-hell matters, regardless of how “fruitful” or “charitable” they look on the exterior…therefore, basic morality in the nation’s “family laws” eternally matter to at least an equal extent as the material compassion Jesus spoke of, and neither should be neglected.

As for “tough guy preachers”,  what would this pious scolder call Jesus Christ?   Or John the Baptist?   What would he call the Apostle Paul?   For that matter, what would this young man say to someone like Rachel Held Evans or Jim Wallis (who recently led a “prayer initiative” to reverse the 2016 Presidential election results)?    Apparently, Marxism in the name of Jesus is a “higher virtue” – to some,  at least – than forms of political engagement which stress personal morality and collective responsibility.    This fellow is quite typical of the clear majority of his generation, but thankfully not all of them….

Many Americans Just Don’t Know . . . While Others Must Have Forgotten

On the other side of the coin, it’s also thankfully welcome to see a committed Christ follower leading people, in the name of Jesus, to our state capitals to demand the repeal of laws that sanction utter and contemptuous disrespect for the sanctity of  life and marriage.    Who’s right here?   Whose position is godly in reality?

History has plenty of Christian activists the Lord has used to accomplish God-sized human suffering relief projects, even when some of them were not morally perfect, and quite often when some came very close to being so.    Aside from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was engaged in attempting to rid Germany of the Nazis, we also think of William Wilberforce,  of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the days before he became a sodomous, philandering hypocrite whose underlying character couldn’t handle the fame),  of founding document signers like Daniel Webster, and of the many faithful disciples today who lead family policy councils or Christian legal defense ministries across the country.   We think of believers serving in Congress or the state house.    We think of believers who defied civil law to operate the Underground Railroad, freeing escaping slaves in the 19th century – an operation that involved many pastors.  Some saints have been martyred for their efforts to bring legal reform to immoral governments – can we then say they brought martyrdom on themselves due to disobedience in getting “entangled in the affairs of life” or did Paul have some other context in mind for his admonition?   Is it wrong for a Christ-follower to make a living from political activism or from government service?

There are several factors that make contemporary believers uncomfortable with Christian political activism, among them:

(1) The church is often complicit in supporting moral evils
The reasons behind an ongoing 60-year history of church impotence against the Sexual Revolution are myriad.   They range from the humanist origins of the mainline Protestant denominations and the fear of man, to the indirect mega-profit from the continuation of the legalized abomination in question.    Nothing new here:  Wilberforce had to contend with a corrupt, complicit church as well, and so did Bonhoeffer, sadly.  

(2) failure to understand the spiritual warfare involved  
Many Christians are unaware of opposition in the spiritual realm, or are unschooled in it, or are simply unwilling to take it on.    They don’t want to maintain the moral purity or rigorous spiritual discipline necessary to engage on that level and be that channel for the Lord’s power.

(3) heightened risk of idolatry and wrong motives
Speaking of spiritual warfare, if we don’t do regular health-checks on our egos and motives, and fail to guard our hearts, this target we’ve painted on our own backs by engaging the kingdom of darkness are never out of satan’s sight.    Those who do engage must constantly readjust, to maintain total dependency on the power of God, focus on the glory of God, and stay plugged into the Power Source.    That’s hard work!   We must often do so in an atmosphere of undeserved criticism and slander that’s devil-commissioned.   On top of all that, we must maintain balanced family commitments and relationships, so that our project doesn’t morph into our idol as the going gets progressively tough, and discouragements come.

(4) resource-intensiveness (time, treasure, talent)
Even Jesus counseled not to start building a tower without first counting the cost and making sure we have the resources to complete it.    He pointed out the ridicule that might come from not being able to complete it, but there’s even damage to the cause itself possible, from not reasonably sizing up what it’s going to take, and asking the Lord to meet any shortfalls before starting.

(5) interference with family relationships
Touched on earlier, the thought continues that our number one priority is the souls of our progeny and spouse.    None of us possesses the resources to clean up the world, while fulfilling our kingdom obligations to those we only get one shot at bringing up, or bringing along.     We must rely on the Lord to bridge the gap, while being as responsible as we can humanly be.   Everyone knows of missionary kids who grew up apostate or delinquent, and so do the many opponents of our kingdom calling outside the home.

(6) possible neglect of the basic gospel work
Face it, as evidenced above, we’re going to get accused by satan of this one anyway if there’s any form of sexual ethics at stake.     None of us wants the “neglect” charge to be rendered true in the course of our mission.   It really needn’t be.    Testimony to the gospel is as much of a function of how we walk before pagans and weaker Christians as we go about our task, as it is of anything we say or hand out in the form of tracts.   Some causes, if creditably walked out, are the gospel in action, especially projects involving the sanctity and integrity of marriage which is itself a prominent symbol of the gospel.

(7) political success may not yield imperishable results 
(1 Cor. 3:12-16)    And it may necessarily yield any results so in our lifetime.   Will this political cause merely increase our comfort levels while living in this present world, or will it snatch souls from the hell-flames?   Will it perhaps help stay the hand of God’s judgment on a nation?

“If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

What sorts of outcomes or prizes can be expected to survive the fire spoken of here?     Of Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer and King, whose political achievements do you think survived that testing fire?

Notice that the following scripture does not say, “you will go to hell unless you mind your own business and go about your own work”.    It says to make it our goal to do so.   Occasionally in the course of history there arise factors whereby leading this quiet life minding our own business entails looking the other way while true evil is inflicted on our helpless neighbor.

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. and to aspire to live quietly, to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.–  1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

This is certainly not the first article ever written asking this question, but “standerinfamilycourt” has a pointed reason for bringing the matter back up now: we need more success engaging pastor support at the state level in the repeal of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, as courageous legislators in various states sponsor worthy reform bills that might not otherwise have a chance of being enacted.   So far, these legislators have not had the clergy support they deserve for this cause.    We would like to improve the pastor engagement levels, without which ultimate success at meaningfully reforming “family laws” seems remote.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

“SIFC-isms” … A Random Collection

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by Standerinfamilycourt

But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.  – Matthew 12:36

After five years of writing this blog, and slowly building its modest following, it’s nice to reflect whether a net contribution has been made to the marriage permanence culture since the first several posts went “live” on August 23, 2014, and the accompanying Facebook page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional was launched.    In “George Bailey” fashion, what exactly would be missing if the Lord hadn’t taken “standerinfamilycourt” on this unwilling journey of marital estrangement, of quibbling with the corrupted pulpit, and with the equally-corrupted courtroom?    When the Lord finally ordains that this keyboard be silenced, and no one survives to pay the annual hosting fees, what might the audience miss most?

First, SIFC must humbly acknowledge that almost all of what follows has built in some way, or been corroborated by, the Holy Spirit revelations granted to other faithful disciples, authors, videographers and assorted truth-warriors in the Lord’s Army.   Only one or two of these was the direct, independent revelation of the Holy Spirit to this blogger personally.   Even the tradition of beginning and ending each post with a scripture quote is owed to the irreplaceable legacy of the late Rev. Bob Steinkamp of Rejoice Marriage Ministries, a returned, repented prodigal husband and marriage permanence ambassador until the Lord took him home in 2010.

It would be an understatement to say that most of these “SIFC-isms” have started fights.   In August 2014, it’s no exaggeration at all to recall that most of Christendom considered it “uncouth” to explicitly link 1 Corinthians 6:9 with Luke 16:18, even though Jesus did exactly that in the 13 verses that immediately follow the remarriage “clobber verse”.   Many a hireling (pastor) over the years has accused SIFC of being “a divider of the brethren”, such is the sorry state of our culture which directly resulted from the enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce.

1.)  There are no “ex” spouses in the kingdom of God, only ex-adulterers.

2.) The marriage covenant is unconditionally founded on Genesis 15:8-17, and its parties include a superior (divine) and inferior (human) party.   This makes the covenant binding on the divine party, even if the human party violates the covenant.

3.)  The God-joined one-flesh entity is not only a supernaturally-created party to the holy matrimony covenant, but also a spiritual weapon in the miracle restoration of a believer’s covenant family.

4.)  All worthy contemporary writings on the nature of marriage and its biblical permanence are written hermeneutically, and (conversely) all corrupt writings on the topic, at best, can only rest on 1 or 2 out of 5 of the essential disciplined principles.

5.)  #1M1W4L

6.)  #somuch4irreconcilabledifferences

7.) #noexceptionsnoexcuses

8.) #LukeSixteenEighteen

9.) Biblical grounds for divorce:  to repent of one’s adulterous “marriage” to someone else’s spouse, in order to reconcile with the God-joined spouse of our youth.

10.) But what about the BELIEVING spouse who departs?

11.) If your bible says that a heaven-or-hell issue is involved, it’s not “legalism” (ditto for similar assertions about “the essentials of the faith”).

12.) Why are contemporary pastors legalistically trying to apply Deut. 24:1-4 on a unisex basis when Moses did not deliver the regulation on that basis?    What LAND (given by God as an “inheritance”) is being “defiled” when covenant families are made whole again?

13.)  Jesus not only taught that divorce was “immoral”, He taught that it was metaphysically impossible.

14.)  Jesus didn’t teach marriage “permanence”, He taught absolute holy matrimony indissolubility.

15.) Remarriage adultery is not the “unpardonable sin”, you say?   You’re right!   And you should be singing your praises to the high heavens that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only sin under heaven that mankind is given NO OPPORTUNITY to repent of!

This, dear readers, is the key evidence that will convict “standerinfamilycourt” of unique sedition against 21st century  “churchianity” and against the Sexual Revolution in general.  It is probably not an exhaustive list, but only the items that have generated the most “spirited discussions” or countering pieces, and been the most re-shared.    A closing challenge:   This is a very big job.  What evidence will uniquely convict you for your role in the struggle, dear reader?

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
– Matthew 10:28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Church Discipline, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer

We Respectfully Disagree With Rev. Wells’ Wrap-up to “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?” Here’s Why

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by Standerinfamilycourt

And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
– Malachi 2:15

We periodically rerun the book series by the late Assemblies of God pastor and bible college president Milton T. Wells on our Facebook page, because until the mid-2000’s no book came closer to the undiluted truth of God concerning man’s “divorce” and adulterous remarriage.     John Piper’s books are roughly equivalent to Wells’ book, but they don’t teach (nor does Dr. Piper actually practice) disciplined hermeneutics necessary to overcome all the damage that’s been done to our contemporary English language bible translations.     Rev. Wells’ deeper concern for a better hermeneutical grasp is probably due to the fact that he was an Arminian who believed that the “born again” (those sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit) can still walk away from the faith and wind up in hell, rather than a Calvinist who believes all eternal losses for the born-again Christian are limited to “loss of rewards”.

Yet the fact remains that both Wells and Piper came to the same unsupported conclusion, that despite “remarriage” being adultery by the rigorous case they each made,  and despite Paul’s multiple warnings that unrepented adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, both concluded the “remarried” must not leave their continuously-adulterous civil-only union to put their covenant family back together, or (failing that) to obey Paul in remaining celibate until that true spouse has passed away.   Both men presented impeccable, or near-impeccable cases for why these subsequent unions are not actual marriages in God’s eyes, yet neither shepherd managed to follow the case they made to its unavoidable conclusion concerning true repentance and restitution.   More than one previous post has dissected Piper’s faulty (and sometimes spuriously dishonest) assumptions about this, so we won’t repeat what was said earlier.    We will focus here on what Rev. Wells had to say (with the denomination’s General Superintendent literally looking directly over the author’s shoulder as the latter wrote the Foreword to Wells’ book).

From pages 48 through 51 (Chapter VII) of the original text….

“Many a spouse of an unscriptural union is in deep distress when he (or she) learns through the reading of the Scripture that he (or she) is party to an unscrip­tural union. A letter written to C. Morse Ward, speaker on Revivaltime, a gospel broadcast of the Assemblies of God, is typical. It follows, in part, as it ap­peared in The Gospel Gleaners:

Dear Brother Ward,

I have lived in sin and rebellion against God, but now I want to live wholly for Christ no matter what the cost. I have three living husbands, and a voice keeps telling me I should leave the husband to whom I am now married. He says that he does not know what he would do were I to leave him. Am I re­sponsible for this man’s soul?   I am restless and constantly haunted that I am living in adultery. I have four married children and I want to be a better tes­timony to them. My present husband has given me a beautiful home, and we have all the money we need, but how can I enjoy it?

Mrs.____. 

 

A portion of C. Morse Ward’s answer follows: At the well of Samaria Jesus met a woman who had a similar problem. It is interesting to read that story in the Gospel of John, chapter 4. She had had five husbands and Jesus said of her present companion, ”He whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” There is no direct statement that Jesus sent her back to any one of the five.

( SIFC:  We dealt hermeneutically with the above popular heresy of C. Morse Ward in this post, “What About That Samaritan Woman?”)

“Sin tangles our lives to such an extent that although forgiveness can be obtained, certain things can never be straightened out. Paul could never bring back to life the Christians he had slain as Saul, the persecutor. Much of the havoc he wrought in his rage against Christ (Acts 8:3) he could never undo. He simply lived by this rule: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philip­pians 3:13,14.  It seems to me that there are certain things that you are powerless to undo. “

( SIFC:   Since living on, unrepentant, in a state of ongoing sin necessarily takes a person in the opposite direction of sanctification needed to reach the marriage supper of the Lamb, we have valid cause to question how one can reasonably expect to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”, while continuing to covet and retain the purloined spouse of another living person with whom God did not make you sarx mia, but instead, you made yourself hen soma.    The idea that we “can’t undo” a human fiction is (well) fictional.   David righteously recovered his God-joined covenant wife Michal from Paltiel, though he also had non-covenant wives (some of them widows) with whom he was only hen soma.    John the Baptizer told Herod in no uncertain terms “it is not lawful for you to have YOUR BROTHER’s wife” after there was no question from historical accounts that he had “married” her under Jewish law.  Comparing the sinful past ACTS of taking the life of the saints, with the ongoing sin of continuing on with driving a stolen car, or spending from a stolen wallet, or continuing to sleep with the God-joined spouse of another living person is comparing apples to oranges, and is dishonest at best. )

It is true that you have your present husband to consider. Do you want to leave him a divorced man? Would he then be clear to marry again?

(   SIFC:  Here’s where building on a right, hermeneutical foundation as laid out by Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 is crucial to getting the answers to these questions right.   The foremost consideration with both our covenant and any non-covenant “spouse” is whether they would or could die in a continuous state of sin that will keep them out of heaven, according to what clear scripture says — ignored by “Brother Ward” here, if we don’t take the right action to fully repent.  How can we legitimately say we “love” someone or anyone if we don’t care about where they will spend their eternity?    Will this guy be left “a divorced man”?    Not likely, unless he already was one civilly before entering the “marriage”.
Yes, he’ll be civilly divorced as a result of the required act of repentance, but we have to look at what Jesus said about the validity of the union to begin with, and we have to look at where Jesus said “divorce” comes from…and doesn’t come from.    “Brother Ward” is once again conveniently ignoring crystal-clear scriptures:  “He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not [ever] been this way. ‘”    If this “husband” has a living, estranged wife, exiting the false “marriage” frees him to redeem the generational sin of what he’s done and put his covenant family back together with the one he never actually ceased to be married to.   Can this released “husband” remarry?   That obviously depends on whether he, too, has a living, estranged true spouse of his youth.  He may remarry her, or if there is no “her” he may marry for the FIRST time.)

You won’t solve one question by creating a dozen new ones. Entering a sort of Protestant clois­ter is not the answer to your problem. The answer to your problem is in the words of Jesus to another woman, ”Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” 27

( SIFC:   An essential part, we would respectfully submit, to “go and sin no more” is this: “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”   – 1 Corinthians 6;18-20.    In light of what Christ said about becoming a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God in identical circumstances (Matthew 19:12), it’s hard to square “Brother Ward’s” out-of-context advice with the bulk of in-context scripture.

(C. M. Ward: “Letter Column,” Gospel Gleaners, September 2, 1956, Spring­field, Missouri, Gospel Publishing House.)

“Some conservative teachers of the doctrine of divorce find in I Cor.7:10,11,17 and 20 permission by the Apostle Paul for converted spouses of adulterous un­ions, contracted before they were regenerated, to remain together. They base their conviction on the Scriptures and reasons which follow. The Apostle said. “And unto the married I command . . . Let not the wife depart from her hus­band” (I Cor. 7: 10). These teachers reason that this statement has reference to both valid and adulterous marriages, since it is assumed that there must have been many converts in the Corinthian Church who had been married the second time before they were both born of the Spirit, and whose first mates were still living when they entered the Church.

( SIFC:  Such “conservative teachers of the doctrine of divorce” to whom Rev. Wells refers, still are not applying principled hermeneutics,  but he fails to blow the “h”-whistle on them here, whereas some contemporary pastors have done so in recent years.   We previously dealt with this popular 1 Corinthians 7 faux pas in this blog post, and again in this one.   Following through on what Jesus repeatedly said about the invalidity of subsequent “marriages” while our original spouse still lives, and what Paul repeatedly said about the only thing that “dissolves” our original marriage, it is a stretch to envision anyone who is not either widowed or never-married being “called” while in anything  but our original God-joined union, plus a possible tacked-on, papered-over immoral relationship.)

Was not Corinth a city notorious for its licentiousness? It is believed by these teachers that the Apostle was referring to Christian spouses of adulterous unions in I Cor. 7: 17, and 20. “Only, let each member go on living in the same condition which the Lord originally allotted to him, and in which he was when he heard God’s call” (I Cor. 7: 17, A. S. Way’s translation). “In whatever condition of life each one heard God’s call, in that let him remain” (I Cor.7:20, A. S. Way).

(   SIFC:   Remember when we spoke earlier of the General Superintendent literally looking over author Wells’ shoulder?   Watch below for how our intrepid author — whom you can almost see holding his nose as he types away, navigates the “pickle” he has pulled out of the canning jar… On the “plus” side, this isn’t a dedicated chapter, but is mercifully buried in the Appendix.  How ironic that a hermeneutically-meticulous shepherd is forced to relax the disciplined hermeneutics which his denominational superiors felt free to ignore with their bone-headed, politically correct insertions!)

Ralph M. Riggs, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God (1956) presents the status of those described thus: When the Passover blood was applied to the door posts and lintels of the Jewish home in Egypt. Jehovah said, “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2). A new life begins at Calvary. Jesus’ cleanses the past and accepts us as we are when we come to Him. “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife” (I Corinthians7, 20, 27), “This is good for the present distress,” Paul said concerning their problems then. The same can be said of our similar problem now. Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Let the status quo prevail. The past is under the Blood. Start life anew as a new creature in Christ Jesus. To this agree the experiences of many forgiven Blood-bought souls and the witness of the blessed Holy Spirit…

( SIFC:  Above is the last thing the author said – through others – of what the individual Christian should do who, for whatever reason, is in an adulterous “remarriage” to someone else’s God-joined spouse — and not even Wells’ own words or thoughts, but quoting the words and thoughts of those who outranked him in the denomination, before he himself moves on to tackle the “safer” subject of adulterously remarried church leaders and their role in the church…. until Wells finally says this to wrap up, in his own words:)

“God indeed genuinely saves the souls of men and women of unions disapproved by Christ who sin in ignorance during their unregenerate state, but when Christian professors continue deliberately to walk in darkness, they cannot claim I John 1:7. “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. ”

( SIFC: Rev. Wells would have surely been aghast, had he lived long enough to witness the development of homosexual “marriage” in civilly-legal form.  Might he have taken a bit different position than the above, had the Lord had a chance to make His own LGBT counterpoint to this spurious argument before Rev. Wells graduated to heaven?    We dealt more fully with this popular “last resort” heresy, after all the other “exceptions” and human excuses fail rigorous scriptural examination,  in our earlier post, “But Mr. (or Mrs.) New Creation Hasn’t Passed Away”.)

The pas­sages discussed above (I Cor.7:10, 17, 20, and I Tim.3:2) may give evidence that God tolerates the continuation of an unscriptural marital relationship entered into before conversion, but they do not indicate that, by them, God validates such a union as acceptable and approved by Himself any more than He approved of Israel’s having a king, although He tolerated it. See a fuller treatment of
I Cor.7:10,17,20 in the Appendix on pages  108 through 112 and I Tim 3:2 on page162. The texts will there be viewed in the light of their context.”

( SIFC:  Rev. Wells suggests above, apparently without a lot of personal conviction that marked all that he had to say in the body of his book, that the last-mentioned scriptures “may” provide evidence that God “tolerates” departures from Christ’s commandment to allow living on in a union God did not join, and then he gratuitously splits hairs between God’s “acceptance” and His “tolerance”.    This, of course, flies completely in the face of Jesus’ message in the sermon on the mount, where Jesus declared  such days to be over, and kingdom of God standards to be in full effect henceforth.    There is no objective biblical evidence that Paul recognized man’s divorce as dissolving holy matrimony in anything he said in 1 Corinthians 7, or that he ever addressed “divorced” people anywhere in that chapter. )

In conclusion, even if such “toleration” were true in the 1st century church, how could such possibly still be valid, 18 centuries later, especially after history tells us the saints of the first four centuries of the church had eradicated divorce and remarriage so completely that, as Rev. Wells himself quotes historian Kenneth E. Kirk in documenting, that this New Testament morality controlled the church and general culture for 15 of those centuries, despite the fact that the concept was completely new to the world up to that point?

“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals?  Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage.   Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?

“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”

No, such accommodation is strictly carnal man’s idea, and indulging it inevitably leads precisely to a place  Rev. Wells also did not live long enough to witness:  pollster George Barna famously documenting in 2000 that a full 90% of the evangelical respondents he surveyed admitting two things, as a matter of fact:

(1) their last “remarriage” occurred after, not before, they considered themselves “born again”

(2) at least one divorce had also taken place at their own initiation or mutual consent since their salvation experience.

If indissolubility was in reality a part-time, circumstantial “ideal”, without heaven or hell consequences for living in willful disobedience, it would hardly have been worth Rev. Wells’ studious efforts to write this book in the first place!   The concept of indissolubility (as contrasted with the ideal of “permanence”) demands its unavoidable conclusion with regard to what repentance from an unlawful union entails, especially in light of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:30-31, and said again in Luke 16:18-31.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.   –  Proverbs 29:25

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?  May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?  Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.   –   Romans 6:1-4

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

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Purgatory: Yea or Nay?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The words of the Apostle, Paul:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

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

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Remain Chaste or Be Reconciled: Two Co-Equal “Options” Per The Apostle?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”
– Genesis 3:15-16

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
– 1 Corinthians 7:10-11

Jack and Jill were joined in inseverable holy matrimony many years ago.   Upon valid, witnessed vows, God’s hand created a one-flesh new entity, with which He then unconditionally covenanted as the superior party.   Jack and Jill had no children in the brief time before their estrangement, and after a time, Jill began to feel emotionally-abused by Jack.    Jill reasoned that this was because she must have married Jack “outside God’s will” and satan, more than happy to oblige, whispered to her: “if you stay, this is going to turn physical”.
(The Evil One’s very name, it should be noted, literally means “accuser of men”.)    She availed herself of man’s unilateral no-fault divorce laws, after the fashion of the majority of women in our culture.    Not long thereafter, she “married” Jim, thinking she could now have a Christ-centered marriage.    The hireling pastor involved was no obstacle to the second wedding.   Domestically, Jim was better able to manage Jill’s emotions than Jack, and children were born into this adulterous union.   Several more years passed.

One day Jill encountered serious covenant marriage standers online who pointed out the mountain of truth in God’s word that “remarriage” to another while her original husband lives is adultery, not just on the wedding night, but every night thereafter.   At first, Jill quite naturally resisted, but nevertheless she took some time to study the word of God for herself with an open heart to obey, to do whatever was necessary to follow Christ completely, and eventually the Holy Spirit persuades her to get out of this adulterous-but-happy second marriage.  She was able to eventually persuade Jim, which enabled a mutual consent petition and voluntary shared parenting arrangements.

Meanwhile, Jack has come to a very different place spiritually than when his bride was last willing to live with him.    He, too, has been absorbing God’s word, is relieved that Jill is no longer living in papered-over adultery, and it appears he hopes for reconciliation.      He is gentle in his efforts to woo Jill back, and hopefully, much is happening in prayer that the rest of us don’t see except in his manner.     If Jack became entangled during the years of estrangement, he too has become disentangled.  We don’t really know yet, and only God knows, whether Jack is ready spiritually to resume and sustain their union, non-covenant children in tow, under the same roof, but his heart appears open to growing his own discipleship.   He has publicly apologized to Jill and expressed regret for the emotional pain he caused her in their marriage.    All of this puts Jack and Jill light years ahead of most estranged Christian couples on the path to the kingdom of God, and is truly a cause for rejoicing even though reconciliation doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

Enter the blind guide:  Joe means well, but like all of us shepherdless sheep, is no less vulnerable to being controlled by emotions and scars.   Joe runs a local “house church” and a very large standers’ ministry.   Joe has been legally estranged from his covenant wife for a couple of decades, and would probably prefer not to be reconciled, for a variety of reasons.    He frankly wouldn’t have time for her if she did get out of her adulterous “remarriage”, and he routinely refers to her as his “ex”, neither cringing  nor voicing objections when countless other professing “Christians” do the same.   Brother Joe has undergone the further pain of being emotionally alienated by the actions of his wayward wife from his (now-grown) children and sadly hasn’t seen any of them, much less his grandchildren, in many years.    Joe now leads a vibrant “single” life which includes freedom, travel, financial autonomy, mission trips and several ministries.   He reasons that this is in keeping with much of the rest of what the Apostle Paul advocated in the 7th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians about kingdom of God fruitfulness from forsaking marriage altogether, if one is “not bound” to a wife.     He considers himself “single” rather than part of an unsevered one-flesh entity.    Joe devoted a recorded group teaching delivered to the rest of the large stander community about this issue, saying that verse 11,  gives estranged covenant spouses two “options”.   Says Joe, they are not required by scripture to reconcile.    It says right there in that verse, they can “remain unmarried”  – or -they can reconcile.

Is Joe right?   Or is he really just a Christ-robed “MGTOW*” ?
(*rightly-disgruntled “men going their own way”)

We’ll get the technical part of this discussion over with early, so that we can return to a robust discussion of submitted discipleship as a true follower of Christ.   One more thing needs to be said first:  every disciple needs a certain amount of judgment-free space to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling” once they do have the accurate scriptural facts–and unless there’s some strong indication that the brother or sister is acting in willful hypocrisy while knowing and rejecting the truth, they are entitled to the presumption of good faith in pursuit of God’s will and His truth.    Jill and Joe have much in common in many ways, and one of those ways is they are both in this particular good-faith “boat”.     Satan’s “no-fault” attack on marriage, and its horrible consequences in the church  has been a “doozie” from which it’s not been easy to recover, most of us would agree.

It should by now be no surprise to regular followers of “7 Times Around the Jericho Wall” blog to hear “standerinfamilycourt” remind that the answer to rightly dividing scriptures like 1 Corinthians 7:11 boils down to not taking any shortcuts in applying the 5 basic principles of sound hermeneutics:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison, and Consultation.    We have gone into great depth in previous blogs about applying the study technique, so this post will be a “cliff notes” revisit.   Despite anyone’s praying, fasting and seeking the Lord for their personal answer, after which they will “feel lead to…”,  SIFC is going to posit that someone who takes 1 Corinthians 7:11 as “two co-equal options” (remain chaste, be reconciled) has stopped superficially at Content, and didn’t really dig very deeply into that one.


(scripture4all.org  Greek Interlinear Text Tool.  Please click to enlarge.)

A couple of quick point-outs about the content of this scripture:

(1) it speaks of involuntary estrangement (choresthetai – literally, to “put distance between”, as the literal furrows in a plowed field), and is not a recognition of any validity for legal “dissolution” of the marriage.   Neither does it validate the reciprocation of that estrangement, which would be incompatible with Christ’s concept of one-flesh (sarx mia), and would excuse both spouses from their 1 Cor. 11:3 roles in the kingdom of God, with which the involuntary estrangement is interfering.    Most importantly, it prescribes a disciple’s gracious response to a circumstance that remains beyond their control.

(2) we must not overlook the importance of Paul beginning this instruction with utter clarity about Whose instruction (commandment) this is: “But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife not leave her husband“.   (Some translations insert “should” here, but neither the text nor the parsing gives them any support for implying such permissiveness.)

(3) Nowhere in all of 1 Corinthians 7 does Paul ever address “divorced” people, or ever recognize man’s divorce as having any validity whatsoever.   He speaks of illicit legal proceedings in 1 Corinthian 6, but ceases to speak of it there.    Elsewhere, Paul tells us in no uncertain terms that God’s “divorce” is always spelled “D-E-A-T-H”.    If that were not so, Paul would be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

(With points 2 and 3 above, we have segued into the Context principle, which SIFC could take much further, but instead refers our readers to prior blogs.)   We simply say that the advocates of co-equal “options” in 1 Corinthians 7 really can’t go here, and don’t dare go here without corrupting or conflating who Paul was addressing in each section of this epistle.    When he speaks of the “unmarried” “being free of concern for a spouse” hindering them from the kingdom of God, he is not speaking of “dedetai”  but of “dedoulotai”.
Scripture consistency demands the understanding that the estranged covenant spouse is nevertheless “married”, in Paul’s parlance (and Christ’s).

We must remember that Paul got his instructions for marriage from spending three years of direct time with the resurrected Jesus, as he tell us in Galatians 1:

“But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.  Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas (Peter)…”

When Paul says, “not I but the Lord”, this is a much stronger statement than if he’d merely been taught by the rest of the Apostles after his conversion, both by the amount of instruction time involved (equal to time spent by Christ with His disciples) and by the force with which he says it.    Any woman who leaves her husband permanently is in sin.   If she leaves him even temporarily for any reason short of physical safety, she is in sin.  She is actually rebelling against God’s sentence in Genesis 3:16, and its NT echo in 1 Corinthians 11:3.   This is as true of Jill as it is of Joe’s wife.    It is true even after she gets out of a faux “marriage” that, for however many years, has been masquerading as her true marriage.   Will this particular state of sin keep her out of heaven, or just reduce her rewards?  SIFC humbly submits that this depends on her heart being of the same hardness as the “unmerciful servant” of Matthew 18:23-35, and would strongly recommend gambling on the eternally safe side of that gamble (more about that below).

But who else is in sin?   Early church father Hermes tells us in a writing called “The Shepherd of Hermas”, of which there is documentary evidence that the Apostle’s disciples attributed the weight of scripture (in other words, conviction of Holy Spirit inspiration):

Mandate 4
1[29]:1 “I charge thee, “saith he, “to keep purity, and let not a thought enter into thy heart concerning another’s wife, or concerning fornication, or concerning any such like evil deeds; for in so doing thou commitest a great sin. But remember thine own wife always, and thou shalt never go wrong.
1[29]:2 For should this desire enter into thine heart, thou wilt go wrong, and should any other as evil as this, thou commitest sin. For this desire in a servant of God is a great sin; and if any man doeth this evil deed, he worketh out death for himself.
1[29]:3 Look to it therefore. Abstain from this desire; for, where holiness dwelleth, there lawlessness ought not to enter into the heart of a righteous man.”
1[29]:4 I say to him, “Sir, permit me to ask thee a few more questions” “Say on,” saith he. “Sir,” say I, “if a man who has a wife that is faithful in the Lord detect her in adultery, doth the husband sin in living with her?”
1[29]:5 “So long as he is ignorant,” saith he, “he sinneth not; but if the husband know of her sin, and the wife repent not, but continue in her fornication, and her husband live with her, he makes himself responsible for her sin and an accomplice in her adultery.”
1[29]:6 “What then, Sir,” say I, “shall the husband do, if the wife continue in this case?” “Let him divorce(*) her,” saith he, “and let the husband abide alone: but if after divorcing (*) his wife he shall marry another, he likewise committeth adultery.”
1[29]:7 “If then, Sir,” say I, “after the wife is divorced (*), she repent and desire to return to her own husband, shall she not be received?”
1[29]:8 “Certainly,” saith he, “if the husband receiveth her not, he sinneth and bringeth great sin upon himself; nay, one who hath sinned and repented must be received, yet not often; for there is but one repentance for the servants of God. For the sake of her repentance therefore the husband ought not to marry. This is the manner of acting enjoined on husband and wife.
1[29]:9 Not only,” saith he, “is it adultery, if a man pollute his flesh, but whosoever doeth things like unto the heathen committeth adultery. If therefore in such deeds as these likewise a man continue and repent not, keep away from him, and live not with him. Otherwise, thou also art a partaker of his sin.
1[29]:10 For this cause ye were enjoined to remain single, whether husband or wife; for in such cases repentance is possible.

[   SIFC:  (*) This translation of The Shepherd uses the words “put away” (or, send away) instead of “divorce”, and here is the original Greek text –

where the word “apoluo” was used (literally meaning: “from-loose”) which most of the early church fathers considered a separation only from “bed and board”- not necessarily a legal dissolution, though Hermes’ writing indeed indicates that Roman law, similar to today’s “condonation” provisions in some U.S. states, may have immorally required this in order to legally exonerate the husband from presumptions of “complicity”.]    This distinction is important because it helps establish that the disciples’ disciples such as Hermes only recognized legal divorce as a man-made contrivance, and (like Jesus) didn’t really hold that it dissolved the actual union.   

 Note, however, that Hermes specifically charged one-flesh spouses with the duty of care over each other’s souls, and so portrays the Holy Spirit as commanding reconciliation consistent with no-excuses indissolubility, so far as it depends upon us.      This would be consistent with the sharp warning Jesus gave in Matthew 18:23-35, also with 2 Corinthians 5:18 and Romans 12:17-19, as well as with 1 Corinthians 7:2-3.    Some who can’t presently bring themselves to obey in this area will try to call this idea that reconciliation is mandatory, “legalism”.   “standerinfamilycourt” appreciates Leonard Ravenhill’s take on legalism, and would suggest taking great care before obedience to an apparent heaven-or-hell commandment is dismissed by a Christ-follower as “legalism”, even though many contemporary “Christians” do so almost reflexively.

“standerinfamilycourt”  personally admits accepting this commandment reluctantly, since a returned spouse in this instance means one who is likely to come back to a financially and emotionally stable household with shattered health and finances, not to even mention a mountain of debt trailing behind as one more evidence of God’s merciful attempt to change their “free will”.    (The Prodigal Son came back home with the stench of hog manure on him and still was draped with his father’s best robe before finding a bathtub.)  Cherished activities and ministries may have to be given up with little or no notice to others.   Oh that Paul had left us with two equally moral options, of which we could “opt” to fulfill the easier of the two!  But a repenting spouse who dies in his or her sins because we refused to lay down our lives the way Jesus did, is infinitely and eternally worse for us, as the prodigal’s “other half”.    Let such a thing as allowing a prodigal to die in their sin be God’s decision, never SIFC’s!

With this last bit of discussion, we’ve just applied three more principles of sound hermeneutics to 1 Corinthians 7:11 – remain chaste or be reconciled:  Culture, Comparison and Consultation.

As readers might imagine, there is a real Jill and a real Jack in the online marriage permanence community.   One of them appears to be earnestly seeking to reconcile and the other has been making some powerful YouTube videos that have raised some of these questions about reconciliation.    The reconciliation-seeker goes so far as to comment about their intentions on their one-flesh’s YouTube posts, apologizing for what happened.   May God protect this pair from satan’s interference until His full will is done.    Both spouses may be “newbies” when it comes to all the implications of the indissolubility of holy matrimony.   At least one of the spouses makes clear that they need additional time and space to process all that repentance entails, and SIFC would agree they deserve it, so long as their true heart is to obey.    The reluctant spouse is also considering the feelings of the children born into the noncovenant “marriage”, perhaps very wisely, though obedience to Christ usually resolves such matters in due time.   Certainly it is prudent for the reluctant spouse to not act in a way that would mislead the children to believe that getting out of the noncovenant union with their other parent was being done for reasons the world (and worldly church) would regard as “adulterous”.      That spouse has asserted the voice of the Holy Spirit in “not being told to reconcile”.    It is not wrong to aspire to be Spirit-led, but we should remember that the person of the Holy Spirit never leads in contradiction to scripture, even where scripture’s application has been obscured by contemporary culture.    (To round out the discussion, SIFC also notes the previous posts addressing some Anabaptist sects who (for other reasons) falsely teach that reconciliation with the spouse of our youth after repenting of an adulterous noncovenant “marriage” is actually “sinful”.)

In Dr. Eggerson’s classic Christian book,  “Love and Respect”, he echoes the marriage instructions of Peter and Paul  in commanding the husband to love his wife, but commanding the wife to respect her husband.    A husband who effectively “writes off” the soul of his prodigal wife (and sometimes their children) after “remarriage”, by treating the instructions to remain chaste or be reconciled as “either / or” options at his own choosing,  does not love her the way Hosea loved Gomer, nor the way Paul describes in Ephesians 5.     As a result, he is directly contributing to her disrespect and continued prodigal state, and probably her perception of him as a “hypocrite”, since he’s wearing Christ as a large badge, but not modeling Christ toward her very well.    The wife who refuses a repenting husband his God-assigned role of her “head”, does not respect him, and by extension, does not respect Christ in him or over him.   In time, her one-flesh husband will revert to a lack of sacrificial love.

About the gamble, mentioned above, between “loss of rewards” and loss of eternal soul.    Will street ministry, group teaching calls, YouTube videos on marriage permanence make up for letting our one-flesh spouse’s soul go uncared for as a result of exercising this “option”?

 According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it.For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
– 1 Corinthians 3:10-16

We can’t take our ministry materials through this fire and expect them to survive, obviously.    We can only take the souls we influenced correctly by those materials through the fire.    SIFC would suggest that if we guess wrong here, by virtue of having produced those materials, there won’t be any souls to present.   If Christ’s warnings elsewhere concerning heaven-or-hell issues, like authentic forgiveness, and discipleship through imitating Him by laying down our lives are true without exceptions, there won’t even be a pass at that fire that tests our works.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’

For these strong reasons, it is wrong, selfish and rebellious against the kingdom of God to treat 1 Corinthians 7:11 as presenting two equally-acceptable “stand-alone” options, rather than as dependent commandments (“A”, if not “B”).   It should be clear from all of Paul’s other instructions that he wrote this instruction with a preference for “both / and” (not “either / or”).    After all, reversing the logic and supposing that Jill had left Jack for the “abuse” of having come to Christ, and Jack had remarried, would simply reconciling with Jill absolve Jack from the need to confess his adulterous, noncovenant union as sin and forsake it forever?    Of course not!

Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
– 2 Corinthians 2:8-11

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, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Where ARE You, U.S. Family Policy Councils and Christian Legal Defense Funds???

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.   –  Sir Thomas More

Given his 1535 martyrdom for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce and adulterous remarriage to Ann Boleyn, does it seem at least a little reasonable to believe that Sir Thomas More might have been deeply troubled about the Marxist social engineering a successor Lord Chancellor named Gauke is currently cramming down the throats of over 80% of the UK citizens, a sample of whom  resoundingly told Parliament recently they don’t want 6-month forced family-shredding (no-defense divorce) to become the immoral law in their country?

When Ireland was about legalize abortion a couple of years ago, every one of these groups, whose logos appear above, tracked and wrote about it on an almost weekly basis.   When gay marriage was in the process of being legalized in numerous countries abroad (not the least of which was the UK), it was the top daily headline for every one of them.     The push to radically expand unilateral “no-fault” divorce has been all over the UK papers for more than a year now, ever since a British high court did the right thing by the nation’s families last year in denying a 67-year old woman who had no legitimate grounds to seek a divorce against her 80-year old husband of 40 years.  It wasn’t that this woman would never be divorced from her God-joined one-flesh mate under the UK civil law, however (unless the Lord brought her to repentance).   It was only that it had been just 4 years since she moved out of their main house, and this decision made her await the final year under existing law to fully go her own selfish way with a chunk of the sizable marital estate.

You guys decided to sit this one out for some reason.    One can only imagine if instead of an elderly heterosexual couple, this had been Elton John and his lovely “husband” David Furness being denied a quickie divorce under existing law.    Would any of you have been able to resist sparring back at the outraged tabloids?   Yet, in over a year’s time, not one of you has even shown awareness that traditional marriage in the UK literally is on its last lonely stand.

Believers who care about this issue were scratching our heads, but still willing to forgive and support you when two U.S. states in the last four years took the tremendously courageous step of very seriously attempting the repeal of forced family-shredding-on-demand by requiring that “no-fault” grounds only be allowed upon a joint petition or other form of documented mutual consent, but for public purposes, you chose to sit that one out as well.

“standerinfamilycourt” means no disrespect, but 90% of the infringement of religious liberty in the name of the Sexual Revolution can be traced directly back to that grossly irresponsible bill Gov. Ronald Reagan signed on September 5, 1969.    In fact, innocent “Respondents” on the receiving end of a unilateral “no-fault” petition, having been charged with the made-up crime of “irreconcilable differences”, have suffered the earliest, worst and most numerous of religious freedom violations, including loss of God-assigned parental rights to influence and discipline, loss of ability to choose and direct their childrens’ parochial education,  severe financial reprisals in court for not acquiescing to the petition, restraining orders where there was no lawful cause, jail time, loss of licenses, and on and on.   And don’t forget, scripture tells us that if a Christian (or anyone else, for that matter) is “divorced” by their spouse, it is immoral to “remarry” for as long as that spouse remains alive, an act which Christ repeatedly called ongoing adultery.    That item alone makes unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws the most severe of all religious freedom violations, other than religious acts deemed to be capital violations.

If your mission statements are sincere, how can you possibly be silently sitting these events out?    How can you be so embarrassed to be seen with your brothers and sisters in Christ who care as much about this issue as all of the Apostles and early church fathers did?
At least Mr. Reagan eventually admitted that his signature on the death warrant for the institution of binding holy matrimony was his worst act in all of his years of public service.

The people of the UK have a tiny window of time before this destructive law is imposed upon them against their majority will.    We’re going to be nice in this post and not say anything about how inexcusably the industry special interest group that is backing this is violating the Article 73 separation-of-powers provisions in the British constitution,  but we would like to introduce you to your embattled counterparts in the UK who actively fight for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage in its own right.    “Standerinfamilycourt” is pleading with you to come to their aid in any way you possibly can while this time window remains briefly open due to Brexit preoccupation (the hand of the Lord, perhaps?)   And we all know you can give these family warriors at least the moral support they need right now!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr. Thomas Pascoe and Mr. Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage (C4M).    Please consider giving these gentlemen a hand in not allowing the liberal press and ruling elites to control the debate with the sort of narrative that the past 50 years’ track record in this country has overwhelmingly disproven.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.   – Hebrews 13:4

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom

One of the Worst Downstream Effects of State-Imposed Divorce

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by Standerinfamilycourt

 

The only silver lining in this sorry episode, where Arizona CPS engaged a SWAT team to kick down a family’s door over a reported disagreement with their child’s doctor, is that mainstream media (ABC,  in this stance) chose to cover it, probably not understanding the glaring conservative implications, or that anyone “out there” would connect the dots…many dots.     Nobody, however, who’s ever sat unwillingly in a “family court”, and experienced the horror of having a CPS, DCS, DFS (etc.) surgically-appended to their family life as a lasting consequence… can fail to connect those dots.    Or grieve, as they watch our society literally disintegrating before their own eyes.

Why WAS the SWAT team utilized against an intact family with several children in the house, anyway?    Could it be because societal decay causes such a large swath of our society to believe they must keep guns in the house?    Could it be because the legal environment which makes a civil marriage certificate one of the most financially and emotionally dangerous documents a young couple could possibly obtain, means a presumption that the parents are less sovereign over their children because they’ve forgone marriage as the basis for their family structure?   Or is it simply the profit motive…augmenting and protecting “state inventory” in order narrow an unbalanceable state fiscal budget by accessing Federal Title IV-D funds from a more central government (where widening national debt and fiscal deficits  is more politically viable)?

Back in the better days of our U.S. Supreme Court, parental sovereignty was an immovable staple of our jurisprudence, even in cases where parental merit was questionable at best.    Today, with 9,000+ cases submitted annually to SCOTUS, and perhaps one-third to half that number submitted to each of the state supreme courts in the course of a year, parental rights have virtually disintegrated with the practical reality that access to the benefit of those  prior court precedents protecting parental sovereignty is no longer meaningfully available to most parents.   Only the first appellate level in each state is actually required by law to hear a given case, and the system grants immunities to officials who abuse their posts to persecute or loot families…official (including judicial) immunities that must be overcome in the very courts that have grown increasingly inaccessible to most.    Sometimes a gun in the house makes all the sense in the world, at this point in a society’s disintegration over the growing unreliability of the rule of law.

So, the remedy (says the local legislator and the media mouthpiece) is to pass legislation to require a warrant before family doors are kicked down and the gendarmerie goes in blasting.    (What?  You mean, like, actually enforce the 4th Amendment?)  Tell that to the Ohio family whose teenager was confiscated because the state deemed it to be “abusive” that they were denying transgender treatments to their own child.     No, the remedy, America, is to take the nearest exit ramp off the socialism interstate, and repeal unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws that have for five decades undermined the social and moral structure of this dying republic.

We must not confuse band-aids with eradicating surgery.  Since when have we needed additional laws to deliver a fundamental Bill of Rights protection?    The answer is clear:  we “need” the additional laws because the rule-of-law has broken down due to deep-seated sustainability issues.

And, oh is the way back going to be slow and painful!    Multi-generational painful.   Parental ability and judgment has been compromised, on a macro level, by this third-generation family-shredding regime.   Enactment of divorce-on-demand and (especially) its accompanying ban on consideration of marital fault in apportioning the consequences of forced family-shredding has literally institutionalized breaches of the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th commandments into our legislative and judicial systems, while the perverse financial incentives to look the other way have spread woefully to our nation’s churches.   Nearly every state legislature in the union has various types of weapon-carry bills before it right now, either to preempt the reactionary gun-control symptoms of school and other mass shootings attributable to societal decay, or to combat the reduced security of our homes and venturings-out, in general.

Even under color of (man’s) law….

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”   – Exodus 20:17

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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