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

7 Important Contributions That “Standers” Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce Laws

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David Franklin, director for Bartow Baptist Association and Georgia coordinator for the National Day of Prayer, called upon those at the prayer gathering at the State Capitol to stretch their hands toward the two houses of legislators and pray for unity in the government. GERALD HARRIS/Index

by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

So….exchange several of us attempted to do!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For clarity:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Uh-oh!)

“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:

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

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

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

Briefly answering a few of your points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fiery Furnace : Covenant Standing and Our Adult Children

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. – Romans 12:12

For many of us who obey biblical instruction to stand for the wholeness of our families, to treat an involuntary or our own sinfully-initiated civil divorce as a chaste separation of the indissoluble, no matter how long it takes, no matter what pseudo-authority an immoral civil law system attempts to exert over us, no matter what we suffer at church as a consequence of this biblical obedience,  we yet find ourselves in a very long journey that increases the number and sharpness of the rocky shoals we must now figure out how to navigate.   As the journey lengthens, we often lose the support of others after a long season, based on circumstances we can’t control.  We’re hard-pressed, even so, to point to a single hero of the bible who didn’t also experience this, but it seems really hard when it’s us;  when it’s our kids inflicting some of the cultural persecution and suffering their own mortification over our convictions.

Along with the long road comes the intensifying spiritual warfare, because what we are daring to do is shake the very beams and timbers of the world’s oldest and most powerful satanic stronghold. We are generally a pretty strong lot, if our motives for doing this are what they should be. We can’t be “taken out” permanently by our own covetings and lusts, even if our foot might slip on occasion, and we can’t be shamed out of it, even by close friends or disgruntled family members, if our worst terror is that our prodigal spouse faces an eternity in hell if they die before repenting, or that our children and grandchildren might be deceived into emulating him or her some day.   We bear up, some of us, through intense economic hardship, lonely illnesses, the slander and accusation of others in the body of Christ, whose own carnal choices make our contrasting choice seem threatening. When satan knows, after years and sometimes decades of trying, he can’t get to us any other way, he often doubles back around on efforts to get to us through our children. There are several forms this can take, and though “standerinfamilycourt” has blogged on this before by way of personal tales, this post will try to take a look at how this commonly develops, share some things that might be helpful to think about, and finally share some encouraging outcomes.

Catholic author, Leila Miller has written a highly-praised book called Primal Loss, in which she asks a set of questions to seventy adult children of divorce about their feelings and experiences, which she captures in the book.    Most were accounts of parents who, for the most part, remarried and would never have considered standing for the indissolubility of the only marriage God recognized as such.    The parents largely went along with the culture, and had no godly input to do otherwise.   The kids mostly say their adult life has suffered in various ways.

These accounts captured in Primal Loss make a good contrast against which our own choice to obey God’s commandment throughout unwanted marital estrangement can be compared to the emotional impact on our adult children of our not doing so, for a little balance and perspective.   The whole premise of Miller’s book was the grievous temporal emotional impact on the adult life of these casualties of the popular divorce culture, especially where society expected them not to contradict the conventional wisdom about their “resiliency”.   Her premise is true enough:  our culture deeply frowns on adult children of divorce speaking up about how the selfishness of man’s divorce has impacted them as adults, and this expectation is no different for children of standers from the perspective of virtually everyone around them, except us standers.   One of the most repeated (and striking themes) as stated by many of the adult children in this book is how much they truly resent having to explain to their own children Nana and Papaw’s estrangement.

“standerinfamilycourt” has two adult children of the covenant marriage.   Both were young adults when the marital issues first surfaced. Both were raised all their lives in an evangelical home, where they were not even allowed (by their prodigal parent) to spend the night in a home where there was a biblically-adulterous “marriage”, even if the offending couple was part of our church. Both are now happily married, attending church regularly with their young families, and teaching their own children marriage permanence. Both stood firmly, along with their respective spouses, with this covenant marriage stander for nearly a decade leading up to the unilateral civil divorce action, and for at least a couple of years until a prodigal husband legalized his adultery, almost a dozen years into their ordeal.   SIFC is well aware that many standers have a very different personal situation with regard to their children’s ability or willingness to support their stand.

All this said, SIFC has been violently thrown out of the house of each of these adult children at least once in the past 3 or 4 years, for a reason directly related to pressures from the covenant marriage stand, and has been threatened with never seeing the grandchildren again if it continued, and if SIFC didn’t quit the “cult”.

What are some of these pressures that we wish we could spare our kids (and their kids), which inevitably result from the only choice we can righteously make before God?

(1) The adulterous prodigal and their new spouse are relentlessly pouring on the emotional pressure to validate their “marriage”.
This is an all-consuming, driving force among those who know their relationship is invalid and immoral in God’s eyes.    In fact, the more they knew this before they entered into pseudo-marriage, the more intense the effort becomes to gain acceptance.    Cards, bribes, invitations and pleas will proliferate.  Scripture will be twisted to call into question the kids’ “unwillingness to ‘forgive’ ” or their “failure to honor their mother and father”,  or their “disrespect for the authority of civil government”.    They will be pointedly reminded that their own current church would recognize this new “marriage” (too often true enough).

If those measures don’t succeed, the grandchildren will often be contacted behind the backs of their parents.    The child’s conscientious spouse, who never asked for any of this ongoing conflict, will start to fear for their own marriage due to the household turmoil all this lobbying causes over an extended period of time.    If not properly navigated, the adulterers eventually “win” from the simple grind of wearing down family members, and they know they can easily deflect the blame at the same time, preferably onto the stander.    The problem is not their immoral betrayal of their own flesh and blood progeny, it’s that irksome covenant marriage stand, and an “ex”-spouse who is “deliberately prolonging the pain” for all, by “using the kids”, instead of “getting help” or “moving on”.

(2) The children were not raised with the idea of marriage indissolubility, and they support the adulterous union because that’s what peace with our culture dictates.    It usually takes two firmly-convicted parents to raise up children who would fit into the first description discussed above.    Given the apostasy of most churches and the widespread legalized immorality in most extended families and friends’ families, this stands to reason.    Beyond this is the fact that many abandoned spouses come genuinely to Christ only as a consequence of the marital rupture, and did not raise their children with biblical marriage concepts.    In this latter case, the kids come to associate the stander’s sudden “fundamentalism” with all the prevailing lies of the culture about following Christ.

This really puts the stander in a serious pressure-cooker, and can result in much greater actual isolation from children and grandchildren than the first group of circumstances.    These standers often find themselves suffering in silence as their grandchildren are exposed to one or more normalized immoral relationships that they know imperil two generations of souls.    They also suffer much humiliation in these circumstances.    They  suffer almost irresistible fear and a sense of helplessness to do anything about it, even to the extent of fearing to wear their wedding ring in front of the family.    To them, I offer an encouragement from the recent film, “I Can Only Imagine: The Bart Millard Story”.    Bart’s mother left her abusive covenant husband for good cause, and formed a series of immoral relationships soon after.  Bart’s dad, long  before he came to Christ toward the end of his life, never took off his wedding ring.   He, too, was a stander even as a pagan.   Even as a drunk, he was having one of the most important silent influences a man could have on his son’s future life.

(3) The adult children have their peers to appease (and you’re embarrassing them; putting them on the spot).   They go to work, to dinner parties, they’re on facebook and at soccer practice and scouts.   It’s sharply painful to them to be asked how their mom or dad is doing.   Social media exposure makes this circumstance particularly painful for both the stander and the children who feel “trapped” between their parents, in front of their friends, no less.     It’s not uncommon for adult children of standers to “unfriend” one or both parents because of this, particularly if there is any activism involved on the stander’s part, or bragadocious posts on the prodigal’s part – both circumstances being very common.    They dread being asked by these friends if they (like us) think that they or their divorced-and-remarried parents / aunts / uncles / siblings are living in sin.    Even the most faithful of born-again adult children may not be very comfortable with thinking about these matters in eternal, heaven-or-hell terms.    Their focus tends to cling tightly to how people are made to feel in all of the swirling circumstances.   This concern often extends to what they fear your grandchildren might let slip to their own young friends, because so many of those children’s parents are divorced and remarried, as SIFC’s daughter once protested.

(4)  There’s a ninety-five percent chance they are not comfortable with talk of hell, nor of remarriage adultery sending people to hell, especially by the millions.   The very thought that it could be true is even more terrifying to them.    God bless the Francis Chans and David Pawsons of the evangelical world who are now setting the example that’s giving us permission once again to talk about hell, after a decades-long church taboo against it!    In the meantime, we’ve been up to our eyebrows in toxic Calvinism and toxic Lutheranism, with extrabiblical statements like: “He died for our past, present and future sins”, or “God looks at our sins, no matter how bad, through the shed blood of His Son, and He has thrown them as far away as the east is from the west.”  (Presumably, without any repentance required other than “in our hearts”).    Our kids are tempted to presume that just because a couple came together in “remarriage”, and a sovereign God didn’t stop it, He must have “joined them”.     Most contemporary evangelical pastors look right past Matthew 19:4-6, 8 (and related passages) to presume that God “provided for” divorce, and that all civil marriages other than homosexual or incestuous ones are morally interchangeable.    Against that backdrop, linking Luke 16:18 with 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 seems almost sacrilegious.   However, we need to be mindful that Jesus and Paul each made that linkage twice.
Empathetically, can we blame an adult child for feeling intense alarm and strong denial at someone / anyone saying out loud that a parent they always thought was “saved”, who may have even baptized them, is now headed to hell just for choosing the same serial monogamy that everyone around them chooses?

Let’s face it, if we didn’t know there was a biblical hell-penalty for dying in unrepented remarriage adultery, we might still stand celibate out of our first love for Jesus, but we’d have far less company in doing so.   Furthermore, we’d be unloving not to give our blessing to the remarriage of our born-again one-flesh partner, knowing that the “loss of rewards” the Calvinists like to say they will reap in eternity makes their happiness in this life all the more important to them.    We’d be downright cruel to keep calling it adultery, even though Jesus repeatedly did.    It would be harsh on our children and grandchildren not to do whatever we could to ease the intense stress they are already under, if there were no risk of hell for children and grandchildren who go along with the immoral culture and who someday emulate it.    But the biblical fact is what it is, so we “soldier on”.    Jesus never promised us bloodless spiritual warfare.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.   For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.   –  Matthew 10:34-36

Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.   Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.   But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.  – Matthew 24:11-13

The Apostles instead promised us we’d be surrounded and outnumbered by desperately wicked people in the last days.   There is no way a serious stand can impact our children and grandchildren for the good unless the taboo against talking frankly about hell is gone from us.   If we give place to the taboo out of fear of man, satan wins.    

(5) Their spouse isn’t onboard, including the spouse’s parents or siblings.   Perhaps your child’s in-laws are living in the sin of remarriage adultery themselves, or some of their other children or other relatives are.  Perhaps they are a clergy family in a church where adulterous weddings are routine (or denominationally mandated), and “blended” families are typically the most productive members of the congregation.    Or perhaps your child married an unbeliever, either equally or unequally-yoked. Perhaps you are a serious threat to your son-in-law, or daughter-in-law, because they actually have a living, estranged spouse.    Whatever the reason, expect your adult child to be impossibly-torn in such circumstances, and always make your own choices that protect the sanctity and irreplaceability of their marriage, unless that marriage is biblically-adulterous.

(6) You were once the prodigal, now repented and standing, but your kids still don’t trust you.     I am talking here to the one who divorced a faithful, godly spouse to “marry” someone else you were attracted to, rather than stay and persevere through the issues in your God-joined marriage.   The Lord has brought you back from the Far Country, given you godly sorrow over what you’ve done, but your kids are applauding your spouse’s new relationship(s) because they don’t want to see the other parent hurt again, and aren’t ready yet to buy in to your repentance.   You don’t understand how they’re not persuaded by the years you’ve chastely waited for the Lord to put your family back together since the day of your genuine repentance.  From their perspective, the years they thought they could count on their intact family before it got disrupted by your change of mind (and heart) still speak louder than anything that’s happening now.    That’s a really hard place to be, but not beyond the Lord’s touch.

So, what do we DO as standers with all of this?
To be honest, it seems easier to talk about what we don’t do, first.

– However tempting, and however much legal or informal alienation has developed, we don’t “write them off”.    This is especially crucial for men to understand, in their God-assigned role as the patriarch of the family.   God did not let Eli off the hook when he sinfully abdicated his role as the moral shaper of his adult sons.    Giving in to this abdication urge is an affront to God’s design for the family, even in the extreme situation of legal restraining orders, and even in the second generation.   Whose authority trumps here, God’s or “Caesar’s”?    Be bold, and ask God to bring the children / grandchildren to you, and to remove that restraining order, in Jesus’ holy name!

– Don’t lose sight of the fact that the baseline battle is for souls, not circumstances.

– Don’t forget that the battle is ultimately the Lord’s, but He still needs kingdom soldiers (in their full armor) to carry out spiritual warfare.

– Don’t be the “cobbler whose own kids (and grandkids) went without shoes”.   (This is for the street preachers, etc. out there who think it’s OK to not expect wholeness for their covenant family, as long as they’re “doing something for the kingdom of God”.)

– Never lose sight that NO prodigal mate “divorces” ONLY their covenant spouse, they also “divorce” their entire covenant family, spiritually and practically, especially if they then enter into legalized adultery.

– Don’t be so presumptuous as to give GOD a time limit.   His singular will IS for ALL your covenant family to be whole in this life and to make it to heaven.   Yes, we know it doesn’t always happen that way, but Abraham wasn’t lauded in Romans 4 for comparing himself to others.      

  • DO be so bold as to stare satan down after a discouraging incident with the kids.    You’re a King’s kid, and it’s your birthright, as well as your calling to do so.   Balance that with the other piece of advice given to “King’s kids” (Luke 6:35) by Jesus Himself.   Imagine if God treated us like we treat Him, or if He was intimidated from coming after us in spiritual warfare out of His weariness or fearfulness!
  • DO ask the Lord for special Spirit-revelation about the specific people causing the conflict, and pray for a unique opportunity to be a blessing to them.   Follow through when it turns up.
  • DO prayerfully ask the Lord to pour His peace over the conflicts your kids are experiencing, and a hedge of protection over their marriage, that they would feel His presence and instruction navigating these difficult conflicts.
  • DO accurately walk in your Kingdom marital status 24/7/365, shutting out all resulting intimidation as “noise”.    Paul never once spoke of “divorced” people in 1 Corinthians 7, nor did he actually speak generically of “single” people (despite the bad translations).    If Paul believed one single word of what Jesus told him, which led to his instructions in Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:11 or 39,  why in the world would he?   Paul spoke of the widowed and the never married (“virgins” – parthenos), and the married.    When he spoke of the unmarried (agamois – / agamos: without a[nother] wedding), he was usually speaking of widowers like himself.   To Paul, there were no “divorced” people, only legally estranged, married people.
  • DO pray about wearing your wedding ring and using your married name without apology.    Yes, it’s probably going to threaten your counterfeit replacement and irk your one-flesh spouse.   But who is it who is guilty of the covetousness, theft and falsehood?   Certainly not you!
  • DO remember how loudly your celibate stand is already speaking to everyone around you.   This is for when you’ve shared a deep, essential truth (such as ongoing adulterers going to hell without exception), and you feel the need to “lay low” until the kids or grandkids come to you again.
  • DO ask the Lord to raise up supernatural barriers to exposing your grandchildren to the legal-but-adulterous (and legal-but-sodomous) unions in their lives, the best of which would be firm conviction in their parents about how morally damaging the exposure is.   Yes, SIFC’s prodigal was spot-on all those years ago, and the kids have never forgotten it (to his current chagrin).
  • DO use bible stories (open bible) to straightforwardly communicate unpopular truths to the grandkids in an age-appropriate way, and pray with them.   This is not a guarantee that you won’t incur flak or passing wrath as consequence of doing so (including from your spouse when it gets back to them).   It is best to do so as a response to a conversation the grandkids initiated, and it’s best to make this an occasional, infrequent occurrence rather than a constant one.  You are NOT out of line, and your ARE under God’s covering.   If your spouse reprimands you, treat it as another (rare) opportunity to emphasize souls, eternal destinations, and the impact of the example we set before our children and exposed grandchildren.
  • DO ask the Lord before fully taking onboard their perspectives about the “damage” you are “causing” their children, your grandchildren.   In 2016, my daughter claimed that my reading the John 6 account of Herod, Herodias and John the Baptist to the two elementary-aged granddaughters caused the older one to “wail in despair” about her Papaw going to hell “if she didn’t pray for him”.    I had led this granddaughter to the Lord two years earlier, and knew she was comfortable with prayer.    If there had really been such a “damaging” reaction, it would have been far more likely come from the younger one.   We had prayed together with our arms around each other that day, and they had come to me.
  • DO be purposeful about spiritual disciplines, including prayer in the Spirit, fasting, devotions, scripture memory.   We don’t operate in this kind of realm apart from spiritual warfare, and we don’t “dabble” very safely in it, either.    Do them enough that the odds are your kids and grandkids will frequently “catch you” at them.
  • DO understand “standing” to include standing firm (holding our ground, occupying our God-assigned space).    Try a word search in biblegateway.com on the word “stand”, and see how consistently this concept is associated with the word “stand”.                                                                                                                                         Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
    –     Ephesians 6:13-15

Early on the morning of  “Boxing Day”, December 26, four months ago, SIFC was thrown out of our daughter’s house and sent home early on an 11-hour northerly journey in hazardous weather as a result of answering a question her husband had asked the Christmas night before.    The culprit?   On the surface, it was radical feminism, but on the inside, it was the Holy Spirit challenging her ideologies that are in conflict with the kingdom of God, and which if not repented, are quite likely to seriously threaten her own marriage down the road.    The question posed by her husband was not even directly on marriage, but it was on politics.   In retrospect, after the explosion that occurred at her house in August, 2016,  SIFC should have demurred from engaging, since both granddaughters, ages 7 and 9, were again in the room, and because the topic area, involving a Trump administration nomination, was highly likely to drift into marriage ethics, were I to give a frank, honest answer about this morally  unsuitable nominee.    (SIFC is only a lukewarm Trump fan for morality and character reasons, and these kids both detest him for defeating Hillary.)    Unavoidably, the conversation did drift into marriage permanence and the immoral living conditions of the nominee, who was also not pro-life, as I recall.   Because my views were “polluting” and “confusing” her daughters by opening them up politically to “abuse” in their mother’s estimation, it was urgent that I be out of their house forthwith, our daughter declared (to the utter shock and dismay of her husband).    Day older, day wiser.   It was I who had played into that demonic trap, for the Holy Spirit did attempt to warn me.   I spent the drive home pleading the blood of Jesus over their marriage, after thanking them sincerely for including me in their Christmas.

There was never any apology (except from me for not having the discernment to tactfully change the subject from politics), but by early March, our daughter was texting me about the younger granddaughter’s April birthday party, and the older one’s starring role in the annual school musical, scheduled ten days after that birthday.  It appears that I had correctly discerned the demonic nature of that December setup, and correctly responded to the harsh treatment that resulted.  A week ago I returned from spending a week in their home, this time without conflict, even though our granddaughters were bringing me their bibles and asking for bible stories, and even though they again asked me about Papaw, wanting more prayer for him.   I had stared satan down, had shouted to him on the way back that he cannot have any part of my covenant family, in Jesus’ name, and I didn’t have to worry about creating conflict by wearing my wedding rings because the whole extended family knows they never come off.    After all that had happened, I got to be the one that was there for them, doing practical things to ease stresses currently in their home, that for once, I have nothing to do with contributing to.   Strangely, the other set of grandparents, who live only an hour away, weren’t even there or in touch, as far as I know.

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.
– Deuteronomy 31:6

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Meat Sacrificed to Idols, Inadvertent Shepherds and The Harsher Judgment

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Groupsby Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

marriage, Marriage Restoration, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Valentine’s Week Testimonies….Sonny* and Sally*: A Story Close to My Heart

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NeverGiveUpby Standerinfamilycourt

Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord.
“Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love,
It would be utterly despised.”
– Song of Solomon 8: 6 – 7

A fan of our Facebook page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional,  “inboxed” us one recent evening to ask if we knew of any holy matrimony couples who had been “divorced” under man’s immoral laws and later came out of non-covenant “remarriages” with others to be reconciled to each other by the power of God.     We have been sharing true stories like this all week leading up to Valentine’s Day, and we’re not finished yet!

(* names have been fictionalized to protect the privacy of SIFC’s own son’s mother and father in law, but the facts are true and real.)

One blustery late afternoon in February several years ago, our son asked a young lady to marry him after he had led her to the Lord, and she accepted.    SIFC had met this young lady on two or three previous occasions, on the first of which, she temporarily had blue hair and various body piercings.    The next occasion saw her at our home prior to attending a business dinner as our son’s escort, and I was asked to lend her a pair of tights for the evening so that the “cutting” scars on her legs would not show.    It wasn’t long after that, that an early May wedding was scheduled, and the mother-of- the-groom was heading toward the home of her parents to assist the mother-of-the-bride with her gown for the occasion, sewing basket in hand.   The family story that unfolded as we prepared for this wedding was an amazing one indeed.

Sonny, his pastor brother “Sam”, and Sally were all from Cajun country in Louisiana, and now were living and working in north central Illinois.    Sonny and Sally married young, not long after finishing high school.    Unlike the brother,  neither Sonny nor Sally are born-again believers to this very day, despite Sonny’s and Sam’s father also being a pastor.   Grandfather and uncle co-officiated at the tender wedding of our children in 2011.

A few years into Sonny and Sally’s marriage, Sally met another man and divorced Sonny.    She remarried this other man, taking two children, including our daughter-in-love, into this new “marriage”.    To the two dark-headed, olive-complected covenant children were eventually added a blonde half-sister.    God was nevertheless gracious to Sally, and after some time, He pulled her out of that unholy matrimony union.   In due time, she was back home and remarried to Sonny, who had honored his original vows and did not remarry.    (Having now met the whole family, I have to strongly suspect the unrelenting prayers of the elder pastor and his wife, Sally’s in-laws back in Louisiana.)

Though Sonny remains a polite but firm atheist, he did not hesitate to forgive his covenant wife, nor raise his little non-covenant step-daughter in such a way that you would never know she is not his own flesh and blood.    As far as SIFC is aware, the biological dad has not been part of our son’s sister-in-law’s life since the non-covenant marriage was dissolved between the parents.

This divorce and remarriage trial has left its scars scattered through the family, on several levels that reflect the unresolved need for this home to be introduced to Jesus Christ, so that He may become the center of that home.    One of the violent crimes against heaven, when satan drags off a believing spouse into a life of covenant family abandonment and legalized adultery, is that he or she is “AWOL” when a Sonny and Sally enter our lives, speaking of SIFC’s own prodigal, who would have gone out of his way to minister to Sonny a few years before falling away himself.    There is no other couple of similar age and experience to model a Christ-centered, restored marriage in front of them, nor moral authority to witness to them that no covenant marriage is beyond God’s touch to bring about ALL of His purposes for it.    Among Sonny and Sally’s children, the elder son is a practicing homosexual.     Our daughter-in-law has panic attacks, and it’s taken years to get her to wear a swimsuit, due to pervasive scars from the season of cutting herself that resulted from all the turmoil in her family. Though Sonny has forgiven his wife for these events,  the lack of Jesus, and of God’s design for biblical roles in their home has kept their relationship on tense and fragile terms where teamwork is present, but intimacy has never been fully restored.    Our son and their daughter have a vibrant, Christ-centered marriage, to the praise of God, and the prayers continue down in Louisiana, as well as in SIFC’s home,  for the power of God to get hold of that elder covenant marriage one more time!      For nothing will be impossible with God.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

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

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Luke16
by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MarriageHeresy

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

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

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

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.  – Galatians 6:7-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessings, Page Fan, and I hope this helps.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Christian Culture Wars: Why is the MESSENGER Seen as “Judge”?

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angry-judgeby Standerinfamilycourt

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.    For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.”   –  Matthew 10:34-36

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

Some of us have a bad habit of mirroring our self-image after the perceptions and expressed feelings of others.     Hopefully this unhealthy tendency diminishes under the power and control of the Holy Spirit as we acquire the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).  But keeping our self-concept firmly rooted in Christ doesn’t happen automatically.    We have to take a deep breath and be intentional about it.    “Standerinfamilycourt”  has some dear longtime church friends who happen to be legalized adulterers, by Christ’s definition.  Well over 30 years ago, the wife civilly divorced her God-joined, one-flesh husband for some infraction, and probably a very serious one.    Already a mother of young covenant children, this lady “married” a more faithful gentlemen, and at some point thereafter, they got saved together.     They are the perfect argument for the evangelical crowd which cites  2 Corinthians 5:17, the “proof-text” that none of what Jesus repeatedly said about marrying another while the spouse of one’s youth is still alive  “should apply” to them because it all happened before they were born-again.     This couple is gracious, generous, hospitable in every way, and they both serve the church until they drop from exhaustion.   They were among the first to make us feel welcome in our new Assembly of God church after we moved from a distant state almost 20 years ago due job relocation.     When SIFC’s spouse (who was also very close to them) later went prodigal, they were the couple that made sure there was at least a birthday lunch that didn’t pass in lonely isolation.

In those earlier days, SIFC was aware that their “marriage” was adultery, biblically-speaking,  but was sincerely wrestling with a couple of issues that delayed any warning to them:

(1) whether those who die in legalized adultery always forfeit their inheritance in the kingdom of God (that is, go to hell despite all their goodness otherwise).

(2) whether an infinite God deals with such anomalies on an individual, case-by-case basis, knowing the hearts involved, and being more lenient with those whose pastors, under whom they were in submission, have innocently misled them.

Issue #1 was definitively resolved through some events that occurred within the past 3 years, after this couple had moved away.   Face it, would we not all behave very differently if we knew that not missing heaven due to clinging to a biblically-illicit relationship, (the opposite certainty) was even a possibility?      We might not remarry ourselves, out of a continued desire to love and obey Jesus, but we would at least have the relief that our prodigal spouse and our dear friends would not be risking hell if we didn’t do our best to speak up,  I believe.     There would be no compelling reason to offend  them with this (admittedly) harsh truth under those circumstances.     We could “live and let live”, and people would have a much-improved opinion of us.    We could then afford to be much gentler in our modes of influence.     We could attend a retreat and let heresy and misinformation float through the room while we “chill”.

Indeed, if millions of people weren’t actually going to hell for dying in the ongoing state of legalized adultery, if there really were no justifiable scriptural connection between #LukeSixteenEighteen  and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10,  then the constitutional offense which unilateral divorce represents to Christ-followers would be much lighter (at least with regard to the violation of our right to free religious exercise), and we could conscionably “chill” with regard to working for full repeal, in order to go along with the many who are trying to mitigate the 14th amendment violations of property and parental rights by working for various tweaks to the existing laws, which they see as more “doable” than full repeal.    (But, I digress.)

The timely, definitive resolution of Issue #1 in SIFC’s personal experience made Issue #2 absolutely moot in one fell swoop.    SIFC’s very public  “ministry” was launched as a result, though it was not originally planned that way.   Issue #2  became even more moot as awareness grew of the free online deep bible study resources available to any sincere Christ-follower wanting the truth and wanting to obey, also with the growth in vocality of the Marriage Permanence movement leaders and members, including several solid pastors with very well-done online sermons.    As deplorably difficult as this matter is, it’s becoming increasingly impossible for anyone in the church to honestly claim they’ve not been warned, unless they live under a rock.    This trend is quite likely to continue, orchestrated by God.

One day the wife of this couple (a facebook friend) broke into an online  conversation SIFC was having with another gentleman on the topic of the need for adulterously “married” partners to sever those unions.      She gave a very emotional plea around all that she had experienced in suffering under her true marriage with the unsaved husband of her youth, then the Lord “bringing her” a godly husband who got saved alongside her.    A very dicey exchange followed, along the lines of SIFC’s then-recent discoveries described above, also how our denomination had officially moved from a biblical to an unholy and unbiblical MDR doctrine in 1973 (another recent discovery).     My dear friend was told that the pain of this is entirely the fault of the evangelical pastors who decided they knew more than Jesus and Paul about what was right in God’s sight, and that I came to be conclusively convinced with the confirmation of reliable authorities of its heaven-or-hell nature.    My friend’s Catholic upbringing, which she felt redeemed out of,  did not help the conversation much, suffice it to say.

At the end of the conversation, we “agreed to disagree”, and I was amazed that she did not “unfriend” me.   Nor did she “unfollow” me, apparently.     Some time passed, during which I was also exposed to my own relatives, among whom there are also a fair number of the adulterously “married”,  and at some point last year, this lady started occasionally posting these nondescript “swipes” on her wall, addressed to who-knows, similar to this:

“If becoming ‘religious’ has made you more judgmental, rude, harsh, a backbiter, you need to check if you are worshipping God or your ego.”

 Obviously, there is no way to deliver a message that half or more of the “marriages” in the church are no more than papered-over adultery-according to Jesus, that would not come off as harsh to most people.   John the Baptist certainly found this out in no uncertain terms.
I decided to just let the snipes and swipes go by without a response of any sort, but did notice they tended to come after a particularly outspoken day with others on repenting from legalized adultery.     On two of these occasions, there had been a reference to 1 Corinthians 5 in the hours that preceded, and the instruction “not to even eat with such” (in hopes that they will repent and the souls will be rescued, as Paul hoped in the situation he was addressing.)     Yup, that would probably do it!     I realized that the combination of this sister continuing to follow “standerinfamilycourt”  while avoiding any further direct confrontation beyond that first long ago challenge on my wall probably had at least a small element of conviction in it (and probably no small amount of frustration that SIFC was not “healing” out of the “cult” phase — with past-due apologies tendered…)
I began to ask myself if, the core message having been dutifully delivered to her, it might be best at this time to quietly “unfriend” her to spare her the emotional turmoil of my very public ministry until the Holy Spirit could finish the job of convicting.   Before doing this,  I sought the advice of fellow standers in a non-public forum.      Some suggested tweaks to privacy settings I wasn’t aware of, and others pointed to the conviction that is likely building  insider her.   One particularly insightful comment went like this:

” I think what most of these friends think … is that “we” are the ones sending them to hell for remarriage.. when we know that power is not within us but God…”

Now this is some food for thought:   how might they think what they think about this?     Do they want us to just “shut up” ?   I’m sure they do!   Do we speak such a thing as consignment to hell “into being”, in their estimation or fears, as the Lord does?    Do they think we “pray them” into hell (or that we would even remotely want to)?    How could the judgment of hell (or of its prospect, at least) be coming from anywhere but the One with divine authority to do it?

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
– Matthew 10:28

There is the fateful scene in the book of Acts, with Ananias and Sapphira, where Peter says: “Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out as well.”
(The pair had sold land and misrepresented the proceeds from it which they had pledged to the community of believers.)    Those speaking out the truth in marriage permanence are speaking scripture, but aren’t coming even close to taking this kind of authority in Jesus’ name as Peter did.    It will never be deemed “loving” in most people’s eyes to tell someone that their “marriage” is adultery and their soul is on the line.    But it is even more unloving not to tell them, even if in today’s warped culture,  pointing out immoral behavior is deemed a “worse” sin than committing the immorality in the first place.     This is because the guilty conscience cannot be rational, and cannot see that a godly rebuke, though it’s coming out of the mouth of a human, is ultimately from God.    David saw this, for example, did not protest to Nathan that the prophet’s ego was talking and that he was a backbiter.    How could he when the moral rebuke of murdering a covenant husband in order to legalize and conceal his own adultery was to his face?     In the instance of an offended, furtive follower of a public ministry that rebukes the culture of the harlot church and the anti-Christ actions of its leaders (usually by name), it’s most accurately the taking of offense just because “the shoe fits”.      There’s another word for this:  fruitless conviction.

The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, But the righteous are bold as a lion.      –  Proverbs 28:1

If anything constitutes “backbiting”, it’s putting a “corrective” message on one’s wall that has no “To” line.    This friend is not normally a wicked person, and her predicament is largely due to the faithlessness of the shepherds she followed in subconscious preference to following what’s actually in her bible.    Even for “standerinfamilycourt” who loves both of these legalized adulterers of 30+ years deeply and personally,  it going to be the saddest of days when conviction does finally and properly land, and they realize they must separate in order to see each other again in heaven.     They spent those decades doing what they sincerely thought was godly and right, in devotion to both Him and each other.   If any unlawful couple caused SIFC to wrestle with the Lord about #LukeSixteenEighteen,  it’s this couple.

We tend to make an assumption in the contemporary church that Jesus, Paul and the apostles were consistently meek when addressing all issues, and that they only got “rough” with the Pharisees.     This leads to the belief that anger or directness is never appropriate or “godly” in dealing with a deadly spiritual cancer — one, in fact, that is infested with demons.     A recent article,  Read The Gospels To Discover The Jesus Nobody Likes To Talk About by Glen T. Stanton in the Federalist states it this way:

“Two truths about Jesus seem to be at odds with the modern Christian understanding and presentation of God’s son. First, the God-man, unbound by time, held a decidedly ancient and unenlightened view of the world by contemporary standards. Second, he did hurt others’ feelings and didn’t apologize for it—and not just those of the religious fat cats of the day.   Along with the tender Lamb of God, we find a lion as well. We must admit to and accept all of this if we want to know the whole divine person of Christ.”

Very typically, the other person like this in many of our lives is our own prodigal spouse, someone who does not need any enticement to think and speak negatively about their true one-flesh covenant mate in order to self-justify keeping the counterfeit.     If that person was ever born-again, the Holy Spirit is pursuing them relentlessly, day by day, hour by hour, and doing so from within.    It’s easy for the blame for that to fall on the praying covenant marriage stander who has not taken off their wedding ring even though their spouse may have put on a false one.   If the covenant spouse also takes an unrelenting public stand against institutionalized adultery, meaning to change both law and culture, it escalates from there.   Prodigals are half-right about the blame for their discomfort.    We are instruments or agents of what they dread, but we are not the Divine Orchestrator.

For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.     –  2 Corinthians 7:10

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

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

Legalism, Fundamentalism…and Time-Limits on Almighty God

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Psalm-32-9-Posterby Standerinfamilycourt

I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go;
I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding,
Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check,
Otherwise they will not come near to you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
But he who trusts in the Lord, lovingkindness shall surround him.
– Psalms 32:8-10

Is the following reasoning not true in the carnal estimation of our contemporary “me”-vangelical culture?

“Legalism“ is the unpopular belief that man’s divorce and remarriage while an estranged spouse remains alive is immoral.   (Malachi 2:16)

“Fundamentalism“ is the far more unpopular conviction that man’s divorce and remarriage while an estranged spouse remains alive is impossible.  (Matthew 19:8)

Anyone who has an unconditional love relationship with Jesus Christ, and who continues to be led by the power of the Holy Spirit, instantly sees the self-righteous fault in both of the above presumptions.    Those whose love of Jesus is merely conditional will eventually wear down and will go their own way, espousing both fallacious attitudes.     Are such people lost forever?    Mercifully, no, provided they live long enough to fully surrender to His rule and unconditionally repent.      If their conversion was false, they will have a much more uphill battle to true faith from apostasy, because the Holy Spirit only indwells those who truly did die to self when they once embraced Christ.   Both the false convert and the backslider are equally lost at this point.   If their initial conversion was the real thing, His indwelling Holy Spirit, now grieved and quenched, will make them miserable on a daily basis until they forsake all of their self-worshipping ways, including faux spouses.     Either way, God’s faithful chastisement can be counted on, despite external appearances.

Actual legalism can be observed in such people long before the outright apostasy manifests in their actions and choices.     This legalism can also ripen into actual fundamentalism if it continues to grow in the heart of such a person, and this can be readily observed externally in visible elements such as the mode of dress adopted over time.     Their lack of unconditional love for Jesus often either results in a reverted desire to become indistinguishable from the surrounding lost culture in all their ways, or it can swing to the other extreme of a loss of desire to be both salty and attractive in the culture, instead becoming a walking caricature.

Esh

There was a marriage permanence retreat in Ohio Amish country recently, coincidentally timed in the aftermath of one such highly visible fall from grace of a stander who was very prominent on social media.  This retreat  drew several leaders of our movement, and discussion of that overshadowing incident seemed to be everywhere in that gathering, despite a great move of the Holy Spirit that weekend.  The hosts for that annual recurring event are gracious people of Amish heritage who sensed that their former community did not uniformly consist of true Christ-followers.   Many had come out of those Amish communities (typically, being “shunned” in the process) in order to more fully follow Christ without the legalism or fundamentalism that it becomes so easy to hide behind as a substitute for that love relationship with Him.    For the most part, this coming out did not fundamentally change their mode of dress or their characteristic reverence for holy matrimony.  It did not change their wonderful ethic of ministering to others.     They formed churches around similar values, but with Jesus firmly at the center.   Here they made traveling to participate in this retreat affordable for standers of limited resources by putting us up in their homes, where they soaked our families in prayer.   Non-standers in the community spent hours preparing and serving the meals so that standers could focus on the retreat sessions.       Former prodigals and their standers from within that community were wonderfully transparent with us about their journey, and some of the waiting standers themselves are also from that community.    This was a truly refreshing time for emotionally-battered covenant spouses who bear the tremendous burden for souls in their own family members.     Legalism and fundamentalism have little to do with our outer circumstances, and everything to do with whom or what is sitting on the throne of our individual hearts.

Early on, people who eventually fall away adopt (and make highly public) an attitude that treats peripheral matters, such as the observance of popular holidays, the day Sabbath is observed, the name by which God is referred to (etc., etc.) as heaven-or-hell issues.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.   –  Galatians 5:1

They fail to “keep their powder dry” for the relatively few actual heaven-or-hell issues.     They use harsh language and subjective name-calling that should only be reserved for backsliding issues that harden hearts and pose a true danger of falling away, or leading others away.     If such a person is a covenant marriage stander, they structure their home in a way that is so drastically different from the best of what the home their prodigal once shared with them brings to remembrance, that returning and reconciling looks increasingly unattractive to their true one-flesh, especially in comparison with the material rewards that our culture (and church) heap on legalized adulterers.    As time goes on, the floundering stander become less and less Christ-like, less ready to go the distance with a suddenly-returned prodigal, and perhaps even eventually repelling their own children from faith as they come into adulthood.     At this point in the progressive hardening of their heart, they become actual fundamentalists.    This earned label, “fundamentalist”, is no longer a badge of honor for them, but a badge of dishonor.

Sadly, such people may have tens of thousands of social media followers when they finally, publicly fall away from heart-driven obedience to Jesus, potentially taking many with them into apostasy.   Ironically, these people lose (or never actually had) the only valid motive for standing, aside from loving obedience to Jesus….deep care and burden for the eternal soul of their prodigal spouse and children.

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.     –  James 3:1                 

Those of us who love Jesus, without any reservations or conditions, will learn from witnessing this fall…in an edifying way that sharply contrasts with those who follow them into apostasy.     “But for the grace of God, there go I. “

The heresy adopted in any particular case that becomes the deceitful rationalization for “marrying” another’s spouse must be uniquely creative, because if it is not highly subtle, the appearance that their own personal standards of holiness have not slidden cannot be maintained, and outright rebellion against God’s word must then be admitted.     A good rule is that any rationale for “remarrying” while having a living, estranged spouse which departs from the unchangeable principle in Matthew 19:6, 8 is automatically a heresy which results in what Jesus repeatedly called adultery.     However, there are clever ways to attack this foundational truth, and satan will not hesitate to use them.     The current popular heresy is that what Jesus said in Matthew 19:6,8 “does not apply to unbelievers”, claiming that “God does not join” those marriages into an inseverable one-flesh entity if one of the spouses was an “unbeliever” at the time of their vows.     Ironically, there is a mountain of biblical evidence against this claim in dozens of Old and New Testament couples who illustrate God’s recognition of their state of holy matrimony – without applying any religious test.    Logically, this assertion would require intact one-flesh spouses to repeat their vows after they both come to Christ, in order to not be living in “adultery”.  We see no illustration of such in all of scripture.     Only lust and idolatry make this theory appear “valid” – we readily believe what feeds our flesh if Jesus isn’t everything to us; if He isn’t truly sufficient for us.

Those of us in the marriage permanence community who stand firm should not be surprised or discouraged by any of this.    First of all, the battle is the Lord’s.    Secondly, satan’s intensified rage that we’ve recently witnessed is a testament that light always overpowers darkness, and not the other way around.    The very reason that Jesus likened us to “salt” in the first place is because salt is a preservative, of society, of our covenant families and the of the church.    As nice as a lengthy vacation from Ephesians 6 might seem to most of us, satan is not going to take his ball or his bat and go home until Jesus comes back for the third time.    We all know he is actually going to gain power for seven years after Jesus comes back for the second time.   If we don’t learn this while dealing with various and sundry apostates in the movement today,  including the high-profile ones, we can’t expect to learn it in time to be effective when our repenting prodigal suddenly returns home to our families.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.   And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.     –  Matthew 7:24

 

Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.  For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

For yet in a very little while,
He who is coming will come, and will not delay.
But My righteous one shall live by faith;
And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
– Hebrews 10:35-38

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

 


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

One-Flesh: Preaching / Teaching Only the “What” of Marriage Indissolubility Isn’t Enough!

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AugustineOneFleshby Standerinfamilycourt

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.    The Lord God  fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.   The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
–  Genesis 2:21

To our post-1970’s divorce culture these words, spoken by Adam and penned by Moses, aren’t too controversial, so long as everyone agrees that the “become-one-flesh” part is a human, sexual, gradual, “natural law” process.    That way, any number of “ribs” are perfectly interchangeable, even though the Lord saw fit to take only one rib out of the man.    But living spouses aren’t morally interchangeable!   Jesus didn’t agree at all that becoming one-flesh (sarx mia) was a gradual or even a primarily sexual process.  He came along and said a whole bunch of things in one short, controversial passage,  Matthew 19:5-6, that strongly suggested this process is not at all natural, gradual or interchangeable as the humanists would like, but supernatural, instantaneous, individually God-accomplished–ahead of and  independently of the physical consummation.…and (therefore) inseverable.     Then Paul followed along to confirm twice that only death severs this God-created one-flesh entity,  going so far as to say in Ephesians 5…

He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.   This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

This topic has been urgently on SIFC’s heart over the past several weeks due to a trio of recent events.     There is a Thursday night conference call arranged and hosted by one of the “standers” as part of his ongoing ministry to other covenant marriage standers where typically someone gives a detailed testimony, then the call is opened up to questions from others on the call.     One recent Thursday, the featured speaker was a pastor with a congregation who teaches the biblical truth that man’s divorce does not dissolve holy matrimony, and that remarriage after man’s divorce is almost always adultery–other than the rare instance where the divorce was a repenting divorce and where only one of the partners has a living, estranged true spouse.     On the same call was also a second marriage permanence pastor who joined in to the question period.      SIFC took the opportunity to commend both pastors, but was concerned about all the crazy, heretical teachings out in the “marketplace of (evangelical) ideas” that compete with the biblical truth, even among the stander community,  and asked,

“Praise God that both of you courageously preach the truthful ‘what’ of marriage permanence.    But it’s one thing to speak of ‘permanence’ and quite another thing to more precisely speak of ‘indissolubility’.   Do you ever have occasion to preach on the concept of one-flesh, or the ‘why’ behind Jesus calling remarriage adultery?”

There was a long moment of quiet as thoughts were gathered by the two preachers on the call.    SIFC asked if they understood the question, and realized that this might actually not have occurred to either one of them before.    They both said they understood, but SIFC clarified that the question was based on Matthew 19:6, and Jesus describing a supernatural, instantaneous process by the hand of God, and that the New Testament speaks in several other places about the implications of that truth — so, do they ever speak on that topic?    Both preachers on the call said that they didn’t think their congregations could “handle” that kind of packaging, saying… “we try to bring the hard truths to our people as gently as we can, without running them off.   There are people in our congregation who would be offended due to their loved ones being remarried.”     (Therefore, due to the sensitivities involved, those congregations only get the “what”, but at least they get that much of the truth, which is better than the silence or false teaching that most congregations get.)

The second incident relates to a certain brother in the permanence movement who seems to be growing weary after a few years in his stand for the rebuilding of his covenant family,  and he seems to be “re-evaluating”.      He and others are currently embracing an extrabiblical theory, that God only joins two believers in this inseverable one-flesh state,  therefore believers shouldn’t be “unequally-yoked” with unbelievers, and furthermore, God would never so “yoke” them.     This seems to be the “heresy-du-jour”,  such as satan brings along every few months, seeking whom he can devour, perhaps even supplanting, for now, the pair of wicked Judaizing heresies we were so fiercely wrestling with a few months ago.    We standers live daily on the fierce front line of spiritual warfare, fighting with all our might for our families, and giving satan a major black eye every day.   Our lives are filled with wearying conflicts with many others in our world, including other believers whom we love and respect.   The emotional exhaustion makes any one of us a prime target at any time for falling into deception.  This man knows his bible well,  and the Good Book is chock full of historical examples in both the Old and New Testaments against this false notion, so we can only pray the emotions and urges he is suffering will subside, and this brother is refreshed in the Lord again soon.   Until then, may our faithful Father place dense thornbushes in this brother’s path to keep him from walking out the deception.
(Update: this man has now apostasized and entered into an adulterous “marriage” with another man’s estranged covenant wife.  Willful, unrepentant adulterers forfeit their inheritance in the kingdom of God, and, losing their freedom in Christ, they come under the dominion of satan.)

Most marriage heresies are quite easily discredited with a firm and steadfast understanding of the biblical one-flesh concept because most such heresies ignore or violate this truth,  but in this instance, satan seems to be whispering (Pssst…did God really say?)  against even this core truth, by falsely claiming that God only joins a certain few (believers only)  into that instantaneous, supernatural inseverable entity.
MarriageHeresy
Therefore, as this carnal reasoning goes, the battle-weary stander should be able to remarry after a valiant effort at standing, without Jesus calling it adultery if their unbelieving spouse civilly divorced them.     By this same logic, however, most marriages that ever existed throughout all time in any culture have been mere fornication under civil-paper unions, including Mr. & Mrs. Potiphar, Ahab and Jezebel,  Herod and the daughter of Aretas,  Herodias and Philip,  and Timothy’s parents.  Under this logic, John the Baptist only laid down his head on the executioner’s block for the sin of “incest” (since supposedly God did not join either of the pagan unions involved), and Paul was urging believers to remain in a fornicating civil-only relationship in the hopes of evangelizing a spouse who wasn’t born again…

But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.   For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.   –  1 Corinthians 7:12-14

Sanctification without an authentic, supernatural one-flesh joining in place, and without God covenanting with that entity?   Not likely!

The third incident happened to SIFC at a recent weekend retreat held by the womens’ ministry at a former church, where Day 2 of Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s  “Revive 17” conference was being simulcast to remote audiences.     This year’s  theme was Titus 2, which begins….

But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance.  Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good,  so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,  to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Various segments of the excellent day-long presentation featured speakers who each addressed some aspect of verses 3 to 5 of Titus 2:  Reverent behavior, Self-Control, Loving husbands well,  Being a worker at home, Submission,  and….Purity.    Each segment was preceded by a clever skit to set the tone for the speaker.    Just before the lunch break came the segment on Purity, and that skit unfolded thusly:

Two young married ladies were meeting up in a coffee shop at the request of one of them (Girl #1)  in order to talk about her unhappiness with her covenant marriage, and the (married) man she had just met who, of course,  was “wonderful in every way”, unlike the toad she was married to.    Girl #2 listened attentively, then attempted to bring a reality-check into the situation by asking various questions.    Girl #1 finally figured out that she was not going to get any approval for her plans to pursue an adulterous relationship, so she lit into Girl #2:  “it’s all easy for you to say, since you’re married to Mr. Perfect-and-Wonderful.   You think I don’t deserve to be happy just because I made a mistake in who I married.”     A moment of heavy silence, then Girl #2 says “There’s something I have to tell you.    Steve is my second husband.    I committed adultery like you’re thinking about doing, and my first husband divorced me.    It was only by the grace and the mercy of God, who brought Steve to me.” [END].

The conference participants were then called to prayer with their tablemates…while sitting right next to SIFC was the church secretary who had two years ago “married” a divorced man for the second time (her first had unfortunately passed away in his state of sin, but had been a loyal elder in the church.)    SIFC prayed aloud for sound doctrine to land in the session, based on what Jesus taught in Matthew 5:27-32, so that everyone would be able to see that there are actually two practicing adulteresses in this skit, and not just one.   This skit and prayer was then followed by a presentation by Dannah Gresh, where the main theme was that biblical purity is accomplished by the “grace and mercy” of God in our lives.    When the lunch break was announced afterward, the two leaders of womens’ ministry called SIFC outside for a “sisterly admonition”, details of the severity of which will be spared here.

SIFC responded to these two women’s ministry leaders that charges of “legalism” are not valid when a heaven-or-hell issue, according to biblical instruction, makes clear that real souls are at-stake.  Since Titus 2 begins with a call to “sound doctrine”, it was not “inappropriate” in an audience that included impressionable teenage girls (their own daughters, as a matter of fact), for Christ’s directly relevant teaching to bring the skit back into alignment with the scriptural truth.    One of the two pleaded that the remarriage(s) in question were not adultery because the original marriage(s) and divorce(s) occurred before some of the parties got saved, so nobody’s going to hell due to “God’s grace”.   It ended with “an agreement to disagree”, and was followed up two days later with a rebuking email to SIFC from the senior pastor of that church, who levelled a charge of “disrespect for leadership”, to which SIFC responded, in part:

“I am well aware of your close friendship with C___ and G___, and perhaps it was even you who performed their wedding (hope not), but if you really love them and want to share eternity with them, I urge you to study a lot more on this topic before you jump to the conclusion that I and a growing number of pastors (now found in quite a variety of denominations), are “wrong”.   I deeply regret that I didn’t take the opportunity to speak with C___ before that wedding as I did have an opportunity, but at the time I was still honestly questioning whether “not inheriting the kingdom of God” was the same thing as going to hell….Remarriage adultery almost always takes people to hell in pairs, at a minimum, if not physically repented before death.  There is an excellent book written in 2007 by Joe Fogel called “One Flesh” that I just gave away my last copy of to the board of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) in response to The Nashville Statement.   I will be ordering more copies for the work I am now doing full time, and would like to bring you a copy when my supply is replenished.   It does an excellent job of explaining the “why” behind all of this in an impeccably-scholarly manner.  It needed to be of this high caliber because each of those board members is a PhD seminarian.”     ( A brief “bible study” was also engaged on the oft-hijacked topic of The Unpardonable Sin in that email.   These leaders all insisted they were “not going to debate” with this blogger.   Both this pastor and Nancy D-W will be receiving a letter this week about the skit, with a complementary copy of Joe Fogel’s book.   The letter to Nancy will be covered in a separate blog post. )

The readers can readily notice that the conflict in incidents 2 and 3 are both based on the same extrabiblical premise, namely, that our vows and resulting covenants “don’t count” if they happened before we got saved.    “Standerinfamilycourt” dealt with that abusive notion in one of the blogs in the “Debunk Series” in 2015.

How did Jesus get around the “black hole” of excuses, exceptions and permissions when He had to take the same wildly unpopular stand in order to usher in the kingdom of God?    Matthew 19  and Mark 10 both tell us….He deliberately skipped past Moses’ regulations designed to mitigate carnality (the conversation the Pharisees all hoped to have with Him)  and went all the way back to the Creation to which He was personally a witness, and Moses was the historical author.    That way, He could focus the conversation on the only thing relevant to the New Covenant — namely, the old one-flesh design “from the beginning” that Mosaic regulations had trampled under foot.    Excuses, allowances and exceptions, after all, are only for those not willing to lose their life to follow Him.    Those who claim that God “made an allowance” for man’s weakness or “hard-heartedness” are pagans and phonies.    To them, anyone who preaches even the “what” is a “legalist”.    Chances are, if anyone preaches the “why” to them, they will be slandered even more severely as a “fundamentalist”, but at least then the rebellious will choose their sin over following Christ with the full information on the table, as well as its accurate context.   If even one of the already-perishing actually repents, the result would be well worth it.

Here are the top eleven additional reasons why anyone who wants anyone else to take #1M1W4Life  to heart, must be educating people about the true, biblical nature of one-flesh as the indispensible “why” behind the “what”.

11.  The culture war within Christ’s church is just as fierce and high-stakes as the outside culture war, and neither will be won otherwise.

There is a cognitive dissonance among evangelicals that makes them resistant to define adultery differently than the culture does.  Even when they embrace Christ’s Matthew 5 definition, they only embrace the part about “mental adultery”,  and they gloss right over the part about marrying the God-joined spouse of another found in verse 32, even though Jesus repeated it two more recorded times afterward.    This can be seen in a response by a Moody Bible Institute representative to a recent letter by SIFC asking them to stop broadcast programming that promotes “blended families” as not being sinful, so that true disciples can conscionably donate to their godly ministries.   Said that Programming Manager, “However I fail to see where the content in the programs you listed [ Family Life Blended and Focus on the Family] are sanctioning adultery.”   This, despite our original letter citing several explicit scriptures stating that to marry a divorced person is adultery.

10.  All marriage heresies (“annulment”, “Pauline Privilege”, “Matthean Exception”, elevated Torah observance)  have the common characteristic of being mutually exclusive of what Jesus taught in Matthew 19:6.

(Self-explanatory:  all are unauthorized  and illegitimate human attempts to put asunder what God has inseverably joined and only death can separate.)

9.  Permanence and indissolubility are not equivalent concepts.

Even an adulterous union can hope for “permanence”,  but such a union lacks indissolubility because of the absence of the authentic,  God-joined state and lack of divine covenant.    Permanent adulterous unions by Christ’s definition lead to an eternity in hell (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Gal. 6:7-8; Heb. 13:4; Rev. 21:8)

8.  Even Jesus did not consider it enough to give “rules” without kingdom-based justifications.

He painted a very graphic picture in Matthew 18 of what will happen if we take justice into our own hands and refuse to forgive;  In Matthew 5, He warned that fornication and adultery are so addictive as idols that we’re better off losing the means to commit them than wind up in hell for all eternity;  again in Matthew 18, He warned that if children / grandchildren are abused and rejected because they’re in the way of our carnal desires, their angels will take up their case before Him and He will treat the transgression as if it was directed at Him.      In that vein, pastors will have a very difficult time ceasing to perform adulterous weddings over the already-married-for-life unless the groundwork of teaching and preaching on one-flesh and indissolubility occurs beforehand.   The “exceptions” must evaporate entirely, because every such “exception” endangers souls.     

7.   Correct one-flesh understanding knocks down barriers to genuine repentance and restitution needed for cleansing of sin.  

God doesn’t just “hate divorce” in Malachi 2.    He was actually saying He hated the economic and spiritual abandonment of the one-flesh spouse of our youth, and covenant children – literally, “putting away”, with or without civil sanction.    We don’t actually need a “culture of marriage” in the church.   Instead we need a culture of repentance, restitution and obedience.   Unfortunately, wicked shepherds have spent five decades creating a  situation that will entail some repenting divorces.  That is not the fault of those convicted to repent, but instead the fault of those who twisted biblical doctrines to accommodate grievous, society-destroying sin.

6.  Correct one-flesh understanding demonstrates just how immoral it was for the Reformers to cede authority over holy matrimony to the civil state.

The Roman Catholic Church falsely taught that only a wedding within that church and between two baptized members created a valid and indissoluble state of “sarx mia”, whereas Jesus taught that all valid vows between eligible couples (i.e., not already one-flesh with another living person) created inseverable “sarx mia”.     This RCC distortion directly led to an overreaction by Luther and the other “Reformers” to misuse the state to create an aura of legitimacy over that which Jesus repeatedly called adultery by restoring access to manmade “divorce” as it was among the Hebrews before Jesus abrogated those Mosaic laws.   No access to divorce is ever needed in a society unless the motive is to attempt to legitimize an immoral relationship through the illusion of “dissolution” and “remarriage”.    This is the only wicked reason for the civil state to have power over families that God never delegated.    There are other ways for the civil state to hold the adulterer responsible for his or her illegitimate offspring without claiming to “dissolve” his or her biblically valid state of holy matrimony.   Adultery partners, on the other hand, don’t deserve state protection that shields them from the natural consequences of their sinfulness at the expense of the God-ordained covenant family.  They need the consequences and censure in order to repent and redeem their soul, since they are never morally interchangeable with the living covenant spouse.   Today the civil “marriage contract” reflects no part of the definition of biblical marriage that Jesus gave in Matthew 19:4-6 in any state in the U.S., and any pastor who signs a civil marriage license these days as an agent of the state is saying, in effect, “I (and possibly NOT God) have joined these two people for as long as they don’t grow weary of each other or lust after someone else, of the opposite or same gender, despite the words of God I falsely spoke over them.”

5.  Failure to comprehend the divinely-created, inseverable one-flesh state robs believers of their anointed walk in the gifts of the holy spirit, and robs the church of all power among the pagans.

Jesus promised we would be sealed with the Person of the Holy Spirit as soon as our lives are surrendered to His lordship.    When we backslide and choose to live immorally after that event, the Holy Spirit does not depart from us, but Paul tells us He is instead “grieved” and “quenched” when we do things like sleep with someone other than our God-joined one-flesh under a blanket of man’s paper and the false blessing of our church.    Such a church, in turn, is deceived out of all moral authority against satan’s schemes and attacks.   This has been recently played out in the religious freedom court wars over Christian wedding professionals being legally compelled to participate in sodomous “weddings” in an earlier blog post.

4. Failure to respect and uphold the divinely-created, inseverable one-flesh state robs the church of leadership opportunities in legislative efforts and judicial influence toward the overall good of society.

If the church deems all heterosexual marriages as morally interchangeable based on civil law, there is little incentive to conform civil law to God’s law, nor to stand up to those who claim it’s “wrong” for civil law to reflect God’s law, or for civil law to promote what’s good for eternal souls.   This likely explains how “no-fault” repeal bills could have been before the legislatures of several states in recent years, and in two adjacent states in 2017, but barely elicited a yawn from the churches of those states.   Failure to comprehend the insult to God, that violation of the one-flesh precept of God constitutes, can probably also explain why the only churches sending busloads of people to national marriage marches were the inner city and minority churches most adversely impacted economically by immoral family laws, and why issues like pot, gambling,  and bathroom access take the highest priority with Christian family policy groups in various states, with endeavors to influence family laws getting little or no funding.    To stand idly by while the nation’s family laws have been irrefutably shown to lead to the mistreatment and deprivation of innocent children instead of their “best interests”,  leading to eventual derangement of our citizens in all sorts of manifestations, is a shirking of the Creation mandate of God for His people to take dominion and to rule righteously.    

3.  Failure to comprehend the divinely-created, inseverable one-flesh state creates an implied moral equivalence between heterosexual and homosexual unions, despite all “hot air” to the contrary.

Remarriage that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous (marrying any non-widowed divorced person) is immoral for precisely the same reason that homosexual “marriage” is immoral:   there’s no God-joining, hence no one-flesh entity created, with which He has unconditionally covenanted.   This would have been far less difficult to explain to the world if the church had not abandoned these principles in pursuit of unrighteous mammon, but as it stands, even the pagans know that serial polygamy is immoral rebellion against God, and that it is destroying society.   Cynically, some actually hope it destroys marriage  (and assessments of biblical morality) altogether.   Indeed, the need to explain these principles to the homosexualist community probably would never have arisen at all, because the Almighty would not have needed to go to such extremes to gain the attention of His bride.

2. Failure to comprehend the divinely-created, inseverable one-flesh state causes church discipline to be carried out unjustly, and on the wrong members.

This point is very eloquently expressed by the testimony of a repented prodigal named Dave, who was shunned by the church for divorcing out of an immoral union with another man’s one-flesh wife:

DAVE:  “They don’t teach about the one-flesh covenant marriage relationship, so, in their eyes, a person divorced from a legitimate marriage is in the same boat as a person divorced from an illegitimate marriage.  So, can I ever marry again and not be living in sloppy-agape?
Now follow my logic here: A marriage can’t be legitimate and illegitimate at the same time. If you divorce from a legitimate marriage and remarry anyone else you are committing adultery. But, if you divorce from an illegitimate marriage and marry a life-long single person, you are not committing adultery!”

(FB profile 7xtjw As with SIFC’s recent experience of being censured at the ladies’ retreat for speaking out against satan’s lies which profoundly marred a ministry event, we must aim to please God rather than men, and remain accountable to Him when our leadership refuses to be.    God is never going to ask us how faithfully we followed our denomination’s doctrine.   He is going to ask us how faithfully we purposed to obey Jesus with our life choices – and He’s already going to know the answer!)

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.  – Proverbs 17:15

 

1.  Failure to comprehend the divinely-created, inseverable one-flesh state causes severe disorder in the homes of believers, and missed opportunity for sanctification of unsaved family members.

If legitimate husbands and wives truly saw themselves as an inseverable one-flesh entity, each would realize that they cannot bring harm of any sort to their spouse without bringing the same degree of harm to themselves.   We, of course, see Paul admonishing the men to this effect in Ephesians 5, but if it works that way for husbands, it’s equally true for wives.    We see this validated in scriptures like Proverbs 12:4:

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

We even see the one-flesh state as something of a designed-in spiritual weapon in 1 Corinthians 7:14:

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

This is, of course, not a guarantee of success against satan’s domination or control of a one-flesh spouse.    After all, a sword is a weapon, but if it is not skillfully wielded, or if it’s laid down too soon, it might be used against its owner!   We daresay that the brother mentioned in the second incident described at the start of this post, who grew weary enough of the Lord’s timetable for rebuilding his satan-ransacked covenant family that he turned a deaf ear to both Christ and Paul, will soon feel it in his own flesh and bones (and offspring) if he does not repent on his face before the Lord of his lust to marry another (and thereby compromise the very soul of another) – with whom he cannot ever be one-flesh.

________________________________________________________________

“Standerinfamilycourt” concludes by challenging all of God’s shepherds to muster the most righteous courage you will ever need to muster, short of actual life-and-property persecution conditions (which obedience in this area might actually avert from God’s hand),  and begin the process of gaining Spirit-led knowledge about the divine, supernatural one-flesh state, sarx mia, not to be confused with satan’s counterfeit, hen soma.   Then preach it boldly, and let the chips fall where they may.    The most likely result is that all of the false converts in your pews (who would not be there, had your MDR doctrine not been falsified to accommodate their sin)  will indeed rush for the doors, but true disciples will soon replace them.    Revival will then explosively follow, but it will appear to be moral chaos to those who don’t understand one-flesh, because a massive wave of repenting divorces and reconciliations will be an inevitable outcome, for the sake of many souls that now hang in the balance.    Those who do understand these events because the groundwork was laid by a return to the faithful teaching of one-flesh will compare it to the purging described in Ezra, chapter 10 and realize that Christ’s bride will not be purified enough for admission to the wedding supper of the Lamb until these things inevitably come about.

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Church Discipline, citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

NDOP 2017 Is In The Books (Yawn!)

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NDOP_EOby Standerinfamilycourt

The word of God is a seamless garment, and men who deny its law deny its eschatology also, and are deprived of God’s power.   It is not surprising, therefore, that this is an era of impotence in the church.   That impotence will no more be cured by frantic and earnest prayer meetings than was the problem of Baal’s prophets by their shouts, “O Baal, hear us (1 Kings 18:26).   True faith mean law-obedience, and obedience spells power and blessing.   Deuteronomy 28 tells us precisely, and for all time, how prayers are answered and a people blessed.   –  Rousas John Rushdoony (2002), as quoted by Jack Shannon, author of Contra Mundum Swagger (2017), pages 136-7.

Shannon goes on to say, “Rushdoony is absolutely justified in taking a swipe at prayer meetings.   He’s exactly right.  You can pray for reformation and revival as earnestly and frantically as you want, but as long as you continue to disobey the law of Christ….and disregard all call to repent of your adulterous marriages, the Church will continue to be powerless.”

From Malachi, chapter 2, just ahead of the far more famous passage dealing with the sanctity and indissolubility of holy matrimony is this description of unlawful marriage which causes God to reject the false worship offered in any and all attempts to appease Him, short of actually repenting…..

For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. 8 But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord of hosts. 9 “So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction

10 “Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother so as to profane the covenant of our fathers? 11 Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which He loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers, or who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts.

And while U.S. Christendom prayed Thursday, the National-Symbol-for-Violence-and-Treachery -Toward-One’s-Own-Family held a Rose Garden Ceremony, complete with persecuted nuns,  to sign an Executive Order promising to uphold the religious freedom of those who voted for him.      Incredibly, the Chief of the Executive Branch ordered his troops not to enforce a Federal statute (which several successors of Eisenhower and LBJ had never enforced anyway, even  Obama) which forbids tax-exempt religious organizations from engaging in political activity.     Common conservative consensus on this one is that Trump tossed his supplicants a religious freedom bone, but one outspoken seminarian quipped that Trump-daughter Ivanka stripped every particle of meat residue off before she would allow Daddy to toss it out there.    (The ACLU concurred, announcing the same day that they wouldn’t bother to sue.)

That morning, Christian radio stations across the land conducted their usual interviews with twangy-voiced female guests who served as the organizational spokespersons of the year to tell us all about this year’s theme (“For Your Great Name’s Sake”), merchandizing,  and where to go pray that Roe and Obergefell would be overturned (but not unilateral divorce nor Amoris Laetitia), that Obamacare would be repealed, that boys would return to being content to use the boy’s room and if they remain confused about how God made them, that coercive governments would stop interfering with truth therapy.   Later in the day, Joyce Meyer came on in their station time slots as usual, as did Ron Deal, the “blended family” guru.     There was no evangelical  thanksgiving to be heard over the fact that God’s hand was moving, after 50 long years, behind two states who are actively  in the process of seeking repeal of the immoral “family” laws that are the root cause of these existential threats to the survival of our nation.   Prayers went up for revival to break out across the land,  from folks who would be the last people to recognize it as such if God did so move.

How life-giving would have been the public recognition by church leadership  that in 2017, God Most-High was giving off many signs to the pure-hearted watchful ones that indeed repentance and revival is truly what He wants for our nation, rather than the far more probable destruction that is the alternative ?

We heard, as usual, about the rich history in the U.S. of national calls to prayer on the eves of other great national threats, and how God indeed heard and delivered.    We heard about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Ulysses S. Grant — all men who were lifelong faithful to their less-than-perfect covenant wives.    We heard about their rightful humility on behalf of the nation before the throne of the Almighty, but left unmentioned Thursday, was the very significant fact that they didn’t have to leave their offering at the altar first and go be reconciled with covenant wives and children, flesh-of-their-flesh and bone-of-their-bones – nor the fact that many of the national spokes-folk would have been far better served by doing so.    Our forefathers didn’t need a slick marketing campaign to engage people nor to substitute emotional ginning-up for actual integrity.

We treat our constitutional freedom of religious expression as something God both gave us and actually owes us.    We call it an “inalienable right” .     But is it, actually?   Are Christ-followers actually owed anything in this life by the Creator of All Heaven and Earth?     Quoting  Contra Mundum Swagger again, page 136:

“Much of the evangelical world simply makes no connection between personal and cultural destruction, and the sin in their lives and in their churches.    They just think they are righteous like Job, and are experiencing similar loss, when in reality they are not blameless servants.   They are guilty as Ham, Achan and Ahab were.   When men are obedient to the law of God, blessings are manifest.  When men are disobedient to the law, curses are. “

We bible-toting, church-attending evangelicals cannot believe how long God is taking to deliver us from Islam and homofacism, and we’re still deeply concerned that Donald Trump might not.   Ham was too cowardly to confront obvious sin in his father so he left it to his brothers.    Achan was greedy and covetous, proving that he loved baubles and trappings far more than he loved God.    Ahab was a lifelong idolator.    All three of them paid for misappropriating God-given privilege and blessing to their own self-indulgence with the cutting off of their generations of progeny — just as we are collectively doing as a nation!    How many pastors, how many religious freedom champions  do we know who are all of these things and worse?     Were we not bestowed our religious freedom for a strong kingdom purpose that transcends our own personal interest?    What happens when we not only violate that purpose but institutionalize an immoral way of life in our churches and choose leaders whose lives epitomize that immorality?

In the natural, it appears for all the world that God answered the fervent prayers of 2017 that very day.    After all, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare that day, along with its coerced mandate for abortifacients and its financial penalties for noncompliance.   Will that event result in the recovery of our nation’s integrity, since the fervent and effectual prayers of the righteous avail much (James 5:16)?  What if, instead of another twangy-voiced spokeswoman who prospers temporally from being “married” to another  woman’s God-joined covenant husband, the national spokesman for NDOP 2018 is the prophet Ezra ?

…But at the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the Lord my God; and I said,

“O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens.   Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt, and on account of our iniquities we, our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to plunder and to open shame, as it is this day.   But now for a brief moment grace has been shown from the Lord our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our bondage. 9 For we are slaves; yet in our bondage our God has not forsaken us, but has extended lovingkindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us reviving to raise up the house of our God, to restore its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

“Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments,  which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from end to end and with their impurity.   So now do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters to your sons, and never seek their peace or their prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your sons forever.’ After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and our great guilt, since You our God have requited us less than our iniquities deserve, and have given us an escaped remnant as this,  shall we again break Your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit these abominations? Would You not be angry with us to the point of destruction, until there is no remnant nor any who escape?   O Lord God of Israel, You are righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as it is this day; behold, we are before You in our guilt, for no one can stand before You because of this.”   —  Ezra, Chapter 9

Instead, when it comes to restoring our 1st Amendment privileges, we may wind up with the “prophet” Hanson in how we sound to the One to Whom we are appealing:

 

HansonNDOP  (MMMBop by  pop group, Hanson, 1997)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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