Letter to the faithful on the Notification sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi

We preach God's grace to mankind, not our own. I feel like that's a point that sometimes gets lost in these discussions. We have no grace to offer sinners because we are sinners ourselves.

Christ commands us to go out and evangelize, to spread the Good News. We are to love each other as he loved us. But as I keep on pointing out, the agape love that Christ had for us -- pure, self-sacrificing, and always pointed to God -- is not at all or in any way a synonym for "tolerance". Tolerance is not a moral virtue. In fact it becomes a vice and a sin when it sanctions sinful behavior in others. We often commit great harm in misguided acts of tolerance. We do our Christian brothers and sisters a kindness when we justly reprimand them, as they do for us. We all work together to keep ourselves and our loved ones on the path.

Matt. 7:13-14:

Condoning aberrant sexual behavior in others is not grace. It is the exact opposite of grace. It is encouraging someone to go against the explicit command of God. It is a violation of God's natural order. It puts the soul of the unrepentant sinner in deadly peril. "Tolerance", in this guise, is a deadly poison to the sinner because it encourages them to persist in their sin.

If we have agape love for those lost in sin, then we must tell them the truth, for it is only by the truth that they will be saved.

 

Did I suggest offering ANYTHING? I don't think so.

Jesus Christ said "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." He didn't say "Go and try to convince others that they are sinners needing to repent - and only THEN proclaim the Kingdom of God". He didn't say "Decide for yourself who is worthy of receiving news of The Kingdom of God by radically changing their sinful lifestyle to fit in with your own idea of what God demands of his subjects in His own Kingdom."

He said "Leave the dead to bury their own dead, [under the weight of their sins], . . . . As for you . . . go and proclaim God's Kingdom.

Preaching The Kingdom to sinners is not 'condoning' their sin, it is informing them of God's Grace as found in Jesus Christ, who was the image and likeness in every way, of The Father and faithfully demonstrated the way we all should live.
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Perhaps we should return for a moment to the question of this preacher who said that a certain category of people should be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death for sexual sins. This is not a valid position since the sexual sin at issue is not unlawful today, and even if it were, the penalty would not be death. This guy was "blowing smoke" and merely teaching his own opinions under the guise of faux-Christianity. He is not to be equated with "fundamentalism," because fundamentalists would have nothing to do with him and would disagree with him. The guy is a nut, a 'fringe element,' and basically irrelevant.

Even so, by law he has a right to spout nonsense and show how idiotic he is. The best thing we can do is ignore him and dingbats like him, and teach the truth in love so others will see him for what he really is rather than as any representation of Christianity.

You two may now return to your rabbit trails. Good hunting.

 

Read what Peter said in his preaching on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:38):

 

Thanks Invictus. It's already in my sermon for two weeks time. Luke 9:51-62. [Calling down fire on our enemies, moving on, not looking back in anger and telling of God's Kingdom]

 

He didn't try to convince them they needed to repent. He just told them to do it and didn't go into detail about what they needed to repent of. We might legitimately assume though that, given what else Peter said, he meant repent of their lack of faith in their Messiah, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. He certainly wasn't suggesting they were all guilty of sexual abomination. I'm quite certain of that.
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We've certainly seen on this forum how effective it is to convince people to repent of specific sins. Schism, for example. And I am confident others on this Forum feel the exact same way about some of the things I and others have said, which they consider to be errors but I do not. But then, I don't insist that they belong to separate churches. It's far better to tolerate disagreement than to insist on a bland uniformity that has a 50/50 chance of being wrong on any given issue.

 

Warning: satire ahead

"Schism".... hey, that sounds like a great name for a new board game!

"Sarah, Jimmy, do you want to play Schism?"
"Okay, sure, Dad!" says Jimmy.
"Great, I love that game!" says Sarah.
Allie chimes in, "Can I play, too?"
"Sure you can, Allie. All right, everyone ready? Jimmy, you win the toss so you go first."
Jimmy draws a card and reads it: Your church has begun accepting marriages between humans and Golden Labradors. Will you go or stay?
Jimmy thinks.............

 

So the definition of schism has now become "Leaving a church because one disagrees with some other idiots in it."
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That actually sounds like it would be a really funny game! Imagine if people from a bunch of different denominational affiliations played it together, it might just have a counterproductive effect in the best sense (i.e., getting people to fellowship and laugh together rather than engage in mutual recrimination). I think you're onto something here.

 

"Schism" by the American band Tool

 

Are you suggesting that Peter did them in and then tried to make it look like natural causes?

What God does is what God does. What God SANCTIONS is what God allows US to do on his behalf.
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Gen. 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image."

God commanded the destruction of the Amalekites in 1 Sam. 15:2-3:

You also see this in Deut. 2:34, Deut. 3:6, and Deut. 20:16-18.

God absolutely does use humans as agents to carry out his divine Will, including judicial killing. Many Christians don't like this, but so be it: this is our God, and he does not change. God holds the power of life and death in his hand; the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.

This is not to say that we just assume that whenever some crazy person hears voices in his head and murders a bunch of people, we just attribute it to the will of God. We should assume that the nut is in fact just a nut, and should be locked away for the remainder of his life as a hazard to himself and others. Christ will judge him when he comes, and Christ's judgement will be perfect.

 

So we have to wait till Christ's return to find out if it was a 'nut' that did the killing or if it was someone told to by God, because the Old Testament God used to be OK with killing people who got in His way or broke his rules? Have you read John 8:1-11. Jesus was COMPELLED by the Law to take part in stoning her if guilty, and the Pharisees knew that, but he refused to take part. Why! In effect Jesus refused to comply with the law. Jesus was and still is GOD, so God does not saction the death sentence anymore during the age of Grace, when we should be 'gathering the harvest'. We are to be 'harvest workers', not executioners on God's behalf.
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Why, Tiffy, I do believe you have become a dispensationalist!

 

Well you won't have to worry about any Amelikites, they were all destroyed years ago (1 Chr 4:43). But I do worry about any self proclaimed witches that may shift in next door to you.

 

I think I might be a little bit of everything, even a little bit of Anglican. Anything as long as it's OK with Jesus, I'm a little bit of it.
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My daughter's ex married a witch.