At the 2007 'Gay Pride' parade, as well as the usual obscenity and glorying in their shame from many participants, one individual held a placard blasphemously suggesting that our Lord Jesus Christ was a homosexual. Even by Gay Pride standards, this represents a new level of offensiveness, whether it was seriously meant or not.
To add insult to injury, P.A. Maglochlainn, spokesman for the 'Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association', defended the placard, saying, "Someone participating in the parade was holding the placard. I defend the right of that person to carry it".
Lest there should be any doubt as to Christ's attitude to homosexuality, some points can be considered.
1. Christ Endorsed the Authority of the Old Testament.
The Lord Jesus constantly referred to the Old Testament Scriptures as authoritative, appealing to them with the words, "It is written" (Matthew 4:4.7,10 etc.). He said, "The scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). Again, he declared, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18). A 'jot' is the smallest letter of the Hebrew language (in which the Old Testament was originally written) and a 'title' is a mark that distinguishes one Hebrew letter from another, rather like the crossing of the letter 't' in our alphabet.
Christ upheld the moral standards of the Old Testament, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:28 in Matthew 22:37-40, where we read, "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets." He quotes several of the Ten Commandments in Mark 10:19.
This means that he upheld the teaching of Leviticus 18:22, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination".
2. Christ Upheld the Created Order of Marriage Between One Man and One Woman
"And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What God hath joined together, let not men put asunder" (Matthew 19:4-6).
This shows that Christ accepted the creation account and the God-given distinction between male and female. He also confirms that marriage is heterosexual and gives no place for the perverse efforts of homosexuals to find an alternative and unnatural way of making themselves one flesh with someone of the same gender. Such behaviour is a distorted mimickery of the sexual union between husband and wife appointed by God at creation, involving the use of the body in a manner self-evidently contrary to its created purpose. He also indicates that the only legitimate alternative to heterosexual marriage is celibacy (Matthew 19:9-12).
3. Christ Endorsed the Old Testament Account of the Destruction of Sodom
"Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Mark 6:11).
"But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone out of heaven, and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:29).
Christ taught that Sodom was destroyed as given in the account in Genesis. Considering that the chief reason given in that account for this Divine judgment was the prevalence of homosexual practice, it is inconceivable that he did not regard such practice as wicked.
4. The Current Opposition to Christianity
Everyone from Dan Brown with his Da Vinci Code to the producers of 'Jerry Springer the Opera' feels free to mock Christianity. This is also true of the 'gay lobby'. The reason they feel free to do this is that they know that all their own claptrap about Christianity feeding homophobic violence is utter falsehood. Why did the placard we mentioned not refer to Mohamed? The answer is that they would soon have a fatwa to contend with. They feel no such fear from Christians.
And yet, despite all the legislative mollycoddling of the Sodomites of this generation at the expense of the just civil liberties of Christians, they are not satisfied. They want every voice critical of homosexuality silenced. The bulk of the population has been intimidated into that silence; engaging, for many, in a pretence of believing same-sex unions to be simply a neutral alternative life-style for some people, whilst knowing in their hearts that it is a blatant violation of the natural created order. The fear of being regarded as guilty of what has come to be regarded as such a terrible crime – homophobia – has the country paralysed. The legitimacy of the expression of homosexual orientation must not be called into question (unlike the equally real and instinctive sexual orientation of the paedophile).
The media are also keen to re-educate us all to a high level of 'equality awareness' on gender issues. A fine example of this appeared just days after the blasphemy at the Belfast Gay Pride event. Was BBC (N.I.) concerned about the sensitivities of Christians over what happened at the parade? Not at all. With its customary "impartiality", the programme 'Sunday Sequence' (which can be heard on the web during the week) had a feature on one Rev Fred Phelps. "Who?" you say? Is this some representative of Evangelicalism here in Northern Ireland? Well, no, he is, in fact, the Pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Just in case we hadn't all got the message that the 'gays' are the good guys, courageously standing for liberty in the face of oppression, and the Bible-believing evangelicals are the dangerous ones, attention was drawn to what must be the weirdest and most repugnant professedly Christian opponent of homosexuality on the globe!
Apart from being a soft target, could there be an additional reason for the hostility to Biblical Christianity, while both the homosexuals and the Muslims (with their professed zero tolerance of homosexuality) are treated with kid gloves? Biblical Christianity, with its message of sin and judgment and salvation only by grace through faith in God's appointed Saviour, Jesus Christ, is a consistent contradiction of the pride of man. Christ is "a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word" (1 Peter 2:3).
Article found at the Caleb foundation website, link below. |
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