Statist Abuse And Leninist Tyranny

State of Victoria Threatens Citizens

Victorian Preachers Could Soon be Imprisoned for Preaching Biblical Sexuality

Murray Campbell

As a Victorian, I have a moral obligation to report to authorities personal knowledge of alleged child abuse. As a pastor of a church, I have both a moral and legal duty to report knowledge of or suspicions of child abuse. Mandatory reporting is a social good. Even without the legal requirement, one’s natural concerns for a child’s wellbeing would automate contacting the police.

In Victoria, under new laws being proposed by the Andrews Government, I can be imprisoned for 12-18 months, for speaking up against the psychological and physical trauma inflicted upon children by gender warriors and dangerous medicos who work to change a child’s gender or sex.

Last year the Victorian Government revealed plans to ban conversion practices. While the original issue was gay conversion therapy, the scope has been broadened to include any and all sexualities, including transgenderism. In November, I exposed the biased and flawed reports upon which the Government is basing its definition. I also noted at the time that the proposed definition of conversion therapy is so broad that it includes normal Church preaching from the Bible where topics of sexuality are mentioned. Indeed, a Christian wedding could also fall foul for Christian Churches define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. In what would be an extraordinary attack on Christianity, an Australian State Government is arguing that Classical Christian teaching is harmful and can be banned.

Earlier in January, retired Judge of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, Stuart Lindsay, wrote an article where he alerts Victorians to another serious implication of Government’s planned laws.

Measuring Up

Statement on Gender and Sexuality

Grace Presbyterian Church of NZ

[The following is an official statement of the General Assembly of Grace Presbyterian Church (NZ).  We believe it will be a helpful encouragement to all faithful Christians, not just the members and adherents of  Grace Presbyterian Church (NZ). Ed.]

At the General Assembly 2018 a task force was commissioned to prepare a statement on gender and sexuality for the denomination. This most recent General Assembly saw that document adopted. May it be a blessing to the denomination and people. 

A Statement on Gender and Sexuality 

This statement has been written as an attempt to provide a harmonisation of love and truth in our context regarding gender and sexuality so that our people may have some pastoral guidance in dealing with these issues.

Introduction 

Christians at the dawn of the twenty-first century find themselves living in a period of historic transition. Our society has become increasingly post-Christian and has begun to reinterpret what it means to be human. By and large the society we live in does not discern God’s design for human life nor delights in the beauty of being image-bearers of God. 

Our societies’ unbelieving worldview denies God created human beings for his glory and denies that his good purposes for us include our personal and physical design as male and female. Therefore, the Church once more must strive to declare to the world, “that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his.” (Ps. 100:3)

Call to Arms

Churches As Sexual Revolution Battlefields

By ROD DREHER

This just in from a reader:

Three very important but seriously under reported stories came out this weekend about Evangelical churches and their responses to LGBT issues. First the PCA (a supposedly conservative evangelical Calvinist denomination) adopted the Nashville Statement at their general assembly. Hurray, orthodoxy prevailed right? Except the vote was 803-541, or 60% to 40%. Which means that 40% of that church voted to deny their own church’s teaching on human sexuality. The same situation that caused the PCUSA to crumble will inevitably happen to the PCA, remember that the first vote on the LGBT agenda failed in the PCUSA by similar margins (298-221, 57% to 43%) circa 2006. Except the sexual revolutionaries kept bringing the issue up and the margins got closer and closer until in 2014 they succeeded. Given the status of Covenant Seminary and its open embrace of Revoice, I am not optimistic about the future of the PCA.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/june/pca-nashville-statement-lgbt-revoice-sbc-ecc-vote.html

Secondly, the Evangelical Covenant church voted to expel one of their leading congregations. By a 77% to 23% vote, the annual meeting expelled First Covenant Church of Minneapolis over this issue. While that should in theory be a victory, remember that once again, theological nihilists are in charge of training future pastors for their church. Compare that to the situation at the Mennonite Church USA which was in a similar situation. The church itself was largely conservative, but liberals were in charge of training their pastors. In the Mennonite Church USA, they also had a church that began promoting the sexual revolution and the general conference expelled said church. The revolutionaries continued behind the scenes, revised the church’s position and said congregation was welcomed back with open arms.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-pastor-and-church-expelled-over-gay-marriage

The last story is a bit older, but no less significant and much less talked about. The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) just completed its annual conference, and the forces of Sexual Revolution are on the march. There is now active organizations at all levels of the denomination seeking to “enlighten” the church on LGBTQ+ issues. Once again, given that theological nihilists are training pastors at their premier seminary, the future is not bright at that institution either.

https://www.theaquilareport.com/the-continuing-downgrade-in-the-christian-reformed-church/

You have three supposedly conservative churches that are about to crumble to the forces of secularism. For the last 40 years, the only institution that has withstood the secularist assault has been evangelical churches; they have proven themselves to be very tough nuts to crack. But even the hardest walnut will eventually crumble. I know that you are currently writing a book about the resistance the church provided to communism, but I will not lie here or engage in pointless flattery:

I do not see how this turns out well for the church in America. 

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Revoice, Bundling, and the Borders of Celibacy

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

[This piece deals with the growing trend of evangelical Reformed Christians to make peace and room for Christians who want to walk half a step beyond the pagan world. Ed.]

INTRODUCTION:

One of the good things coming out of the Revoice conference is that it is making us thrash out a number of things we should have thrashed out years ago. It is making us confront the fact that these things should have been confronted a long time ago.

“For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you” (1 Cor. 11:19).

The whole thing has made it obvious how far the rot has advanced and, in a related point, how long the rotting has to have been going on. “This is really bad, ma’am. These termites have et clean through all your floor joists. Must’ve moved in right after Noah landed.”

RESPONSES:

The basic take of the Revoice organizers is that being same-sex-attracted is a morally neutral condition, and that as long as these attractions are not acted upon, there is no sin. What such persons should do, as the thinking goes, is to come to grips with the fact that they are required by the scriptural standard to remain celibate, and that they should therefore figure out how to use their legitimate gayness that exists on this side of any sexual consummation in the service of the church. In the words of the promotional material for the conference, “What queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time (Rev. 21:24-26)?”

There have been a number of able responses to all this. I would mention Phil Johnson, and Owen Strachan, and Fred Butler, and Kevin De Young, and Denny Burk, and Todd Pruitt, and various writers behind the multiple posts at Warhorn.

What it all boils down to is the plain fact that the Scriptures do not just condemn sin when it has finally gotten to the brink of giving birth to death (Jas. 1:15). Sin is condemned as sin long before it gets to the point of action. Sin is condemned by Scripture in the inception, long before it does anything. Sin is condemned for what it is, and it is what it is as soon as the egg is fertilized.

Integrating Into the Void

Hugh Hefner's Legacy of Despair

The bitter fruit of Hefner’s life’s work has helped poison American families.

David French
National Review Online

Hugh Hefner didn’t invent pornography, and it would no doubt be thriving today even if he hadn’t founded Playboy magazine those many years ago. After all, man is fallen, and somebody would have filled that depraved niche in American life. Hefner, however, played his part, and the part he played was immensely destructive to our nation’s cultural, moral, and spiritual fabric. Hefner mainstreamed porn, he put it in millions of homes, and he even glamorized it — recasting one of America’s most pathetic industries as the playground of the sophisticated rich. He then grew to a ripe old age, consorting with women young enough to be his granddaughters. He was America’s most famous dirty old man.

And now he’s dead. May God have mercy on his soul.

It’s hard to calculate the damage he did, but the cultural rubble is all around us. My generation is perhaps the first to grow up with easily accessible porn. Every one of us knew whose father had a Playboy subscription (only the scary pervs subscribed to Penthouse or Hustler), and their kids knew exactly where dad kept his stash. They’d sneak out old issues, bring them to school, and pass them around. Before teens could rent porn on tape, they could see porn on the page, and once they saw it, they were hooked.

The effects have lasted a lifetime.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Slut-Shaming and the Gospel of Grace

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

In a time when we no longer know what a man is, or what a woman is, it would seem to follow that we can no longer know what the perversions of these offices are. Among many other weirdnesses, we are so far gone that we no longer know what a slut is.

Societies and cultures disintegrate in complicated ways. The pathologies of decadence are built on lies, and lies are always complex. They don’t disentangle easily because they are designed to be tangled.

This is the position we currently find ourselves in, which means we need to be careful as we go. But the need to take care is not an argument for saying nothing because we are up against torrens calumniae, a torrent of slanderous lies. To say nothing is to acquiesce in being swept away, over the falls, and down to the rocky cauldron of nonsense far below. In fact, I think we are already down there, waiting for the ambulance.

Because I am going to argue for something here that will be considered completely outrageous by the sob sisters of feminism, I want to state the conclusion first before turning to any arguments for it. I want every reasonable person to see that every appropriate qualification is built into what I am saying.

Trans-Gender Regrets

A Life Poem Becomes A Death Chant

The Federalist recently carried a piece which is one of the saddest we have read for some time.  It concerns the bitterness and regret of people who have "transgendered".


Secularist human rights are morphing in an entirely predictable direction.  Since there is no ultimate standard, sanctioned by an ultimate Person, to which we must answer and by which we must be bound, all talk amongst secularists of human rights eventually disintegrates into letting people be whatever they want to be.  The ultimate right is self-will-worship.  Sexual ethics and sexual identity rapidly devolve to will-worship or the worship of self.

With the assistance of modern surgical techniques and chemical interventions, women can become men; men can become women; and gender types can vary across a menu of more than fifty shades of grey.  But the human cost of this folly is now emerging, and it is acutely sad.  Firstly, the post-op regrets:

Trouble In Transtopia: Murmurs Of Sex Change Regret

Transgender people who regret their sex changes typically get buried in venom rather than love.

By Stella Morabito  
The Federalist

Everyone has regrets. Some of us have big regrets. Most everyone has some place to go to get help dealing with them. Except for, say, a guy who had sex-change surgery and now would like to have his penis back. (The one God gave him.)

Our culture seems pretty much “to each his own” when it comes to elective bodily mutilation and the regret thereof. And there’s a lot of regret out there. According to a British poll, a whopping 65 percent of those who’ve had various cosmetic surgeries regret it. People who regret their tattoos, plastic surgery, or more extreme body modifications (here’s a sad Buzzfeed pictorial on the effects of ear gauges) can read up on the Internet and find an open array of remedies. Plastic surgeons make money both puttin’ it in and takin’ it out. Hollywood stars can speak openly about misgivings over their boob jobs and whatnot. Regarding her lip enhancement surgery, Courtney Love said: “I just want the mouth God gave me back.

Then, secondly, comes the ostracism, often with a tirade of abuse, inflicted upon those who subsequently regret their folly.

Deliverance From Pride and Lesbianism

God Would See Me Home

Some instructive thoughts from Rosaria Butterfield: 

In April 1999, I felt the call of Jesus Christ upon my life.  It was both subtle and blatant, like the peace inside the eye of the hurricane.  I could in no way resist and I in no way understood what would become of my life.  I know, I know.  How do I know that it was Jesus?  Maybe it was my Catholic guilt, my caffeine-driven subconscious, or last night's curry tofu?  We, I don't.  But I believed--and believe--that it was Jesus.

At this time, I was just starting to pray that God would show me my sins and help me to repent of them.  I didn't understand why homosexuality was a sin, why something in the particular manifestation of same-gender love was wrong in itself.  But I did know that pride was a sin, and so I decided to start there.  As I began to pray and repent, I wondered: could pride be at the root of all my sins?  I wondered: what was the real sin of Sodom?  I had always thought that God's judgment upon Sodom (in Genesis 19) clearly singled out and targeted homosexuality.  I believed that God's judgment against Sodom exemplified the fiercest of God's judgments.  But as I read more deeply in the Bible, I ran across a passage that made me stop and think.  This passage in the book of Ezekiel revealed to me that Sodom was indicted for materialism and neglect of the poor and needy--and that homosexuality was a symptom and extension of these other sins.  In this passage, God is speaking to his chosen people in Jerusalem and warning them about their hidden sin, using Sodom as an example.

Importantly, God does not say that this sin of Sodom is the worst of all sins.  Instead, God uses the sin of Sodom to reveal the greater sin committed by his own people:

Arrogance and Irrelevance

Born That Way

It never ceases to surprise how many Unbelievers fail to understand Christians and the Christian faith.  Clearly there are exceptions--some signal and helpful.  But most Unbelievers cannot escape the cocoon of their own Unbelieving perspectives.  When they confront Christians their arguments amount to a bewildered and annoyed "why can't you think and act like everyone else--that is, like us"?

Why indeed?  Homosexuality right now is a touchstone for highlighting the ignorance of Unbelief when it comes to the Christian position, doctrine, and teaching on homosexuality, in particular and sexual sin, in general.  Unbelievers almost universally assert that homosexuality is genetic: people cannot help be what they are born to be.  To oppose or resist homosexuality is as foolish and blind as opposing blue eyes or red hair.  They cannot conceive why Christians do not grant this.  They are take offence at Christians because they refuse to think in the categories and gratuitous assumptions of Unbelief.  A most bizarre situation.

We will attempt a Christian reply to such nonsense shortly, but firstly, here is an example of that which we speak.  The Guardian, ever a champion of Unbelief, carries a column by Peter Omerod on why discrimination against "Christian homosexuals" must stop!

Integration Into the Void

Forthcoming Reformation

In his important essay, The End of Courtship, Leon Kass makes the following observations about love, courtship, and marriage as it now plays out in college campuses and universities across the United States.  His observations would hold true, we believe, pretty much everywhere throughout the West. 

Below is a summary of excerpts to enable us to get the flavour.  (We will draw some implications for Christians, churches, and the Kingdom at the end.)

I:

Here is a (partial) list of the recent changes that hamper courtship and marriage:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Why Nature Is Necessary

Blog and Mablog

Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson 

Let’s clear a few things out in the first paragraph. Nature is nature, which seems obvious enough, but less obvious is that nature has a nature. The grain of the natural order runs in a particular way. It is not amorphous goo that can be shaped by any volunteer demiurge that happens by. It is not an inert substance that can successfully be altered by an act of Congress, or runaway judges. I just read in the news this week that a federal judge determined that in Michigan water must now run uphill.

This why sex change operations are such a fine example of pomosexual confusion. If nature does not have a nature, then subsets of nature (that would be us) would not have a nature either. If we do not have a nature, then it cannot be possible to contradict or violate it. But if we do have a nature, as established by nature’s God, then one of the first things that rebels against that God will want to do is declare war on it.

Not only does nature have a nature, nature also has a way of instructing us about herself. We see this in the realm of sexual customs. For example, nature teaches us that long hair is a disgrace for a man, but is a woman’s glory. But this creates an interesting set of questions.