2Timothy 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
Marriage
All posts tagged Marriage
‘The Rev. Charlie Holt, who was elected bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Florida for a second time on Nov. 18 amid an extended controversy over the diocese’s election process, issued a statement to the diocese on Dec. 20 saying he will not impede same-sex marriages or the ordination of gay clergy if he is consecrated.’https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2022/12/20/florida-bishop-elect-charlie-holt-commits-to-allowing-same-sex-marriage-gay-ordinands-if-consecrated/
‘While 2022 isn’t yet over — and there’s still a risk of a false flag event before Election Day — from what we already know about what’s coming, 2023 is going to be a far worse year on several fronts. First, food scarcity is going to get a whole lot worse across the globe. Energy scarcity will reach its peak in early 2023 as the Northern Hemisphere endures a freezing winter. A wave of layoffs are coming for Americans in early 2023, and both inflation and unemployment are going to significantly worsen.
Today’s article and podcast https://www.brighteon.com/87f57936-1a19-4a61-a807-482121ae1f2e focus on eight key predictions for today through 2023, covering food, finance, war, layoffs and more. This information will help you navigate what’s coming.’https://www.brighteon.com/87f57936-1a19-4a61-a807-482121ae1f2e
All too many political figures are against what used to be the normal such as marriage between one man and one woman. The Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, is such a person.
‘Dan Andrews wants you and your views about marriage and life cancelled.
He thinks you are a bigot.
In an extraordinary attack on the pro-life and pro-marriage views of millions of Australians of all faiths and none, the Victorian Premier said these views were “bigotry”.
He was commenting on the appointment of Andrew Thorburn as the Chief Executive Officer of the Essendon Australian Football Club.
Thorburn’s “crime” is that, like millions of Australians, he attends a church that is pro-life and believes that marriage is for heterosexuals.
His church’s views are identical to those of millions of mosque-going Muslims and church-going Christians.
Yet Andrews thinks these Australians are all “bigots”.
“Those views are absolutely appalling. I don’t support those views; that kind of intolerance, that kind of hatred, bigotry is just wrong,” Andrews said.
“All of you know my views on these things. Those sort of attitudes are simply wrong, and to dress that up as anything other than bigotry is just obviously false.”
Andrews and the intolerant left are hell bent on punishing those who do not comply with their social views.
Port Phillips deputy mayor Tim Baxter, a prominent Essendon member, quit the club over the Thorburn’s appointment and urged a wider boycott.
Baxter said Thorburn should not be in a leadership position.
Thorburn is chair of the church, City on a Hill.
The persecution of socially conservative beliefs has escalated since the same-sex marriage debate in 2017 and the change in law, despite promises that there would be tolerance of traditional views.
It appears Thorburn is being discriminated against for his church’s religious beliefs.
Federal Labor under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says it will legislate to protect religious freedom but it is hard to see this happening when senior Labor leaders like Andrews simply dismisses social values based on religion as “bigotry”.’https://familyfirstparty.org.au/pro-life-pro-marriage-you-are-a-bigot-says-dan-andrews%ef%bf%bc/
‘Freedom Blend Coffee is a ministry under the umbrella of Freedom for Youth Ministries. It works to empower young adults with work training and life skills that produce “development, restoration and hope.”
“Employment training is at the heart of our mission at Freedom Blend Coffee,” according to the group’s website. “We teach young adults, age 18-25, valuable customer service, food safety and hospitality skills along with life and career skills that empower them to enter the workplace more confident and more prepared for the challenges before them.”
Broadlawns Medical Center is a hospital in Des Moines owned by the people of Polk County. It is a governmental entity.
So, the two parties we’re talking about in this situation who entered into a contractual agreement include a ministry and a governmental entity.
And if you’re wondering, Broadlawns was well aware before entering into the agreement that Freedom Blend Coffee was a Christ-centered ministry.
How do we know this? Because an email dated Dec. 30, 2021 from Constance Rainey to Broadlawns CEO Anthony Coleman makes it clear:
The two parties entered into a contract that would continue for one year effective April 15, 2022.
“While the parties are entering this relationship with the hope and anticipation that this will be a long-term mutually beneficial relationship, this agreement may be unilaterally terminated by either party with 30 days written notice to the other party,” said one of the provisions of the contract.
That contract was signed on March 15, 2022. Five months later Broadlawns terminated the contract due to Freedom for Youth’s religious beliefs.
To put it another way — a government entity punished a ministry for its faith.’ Full article at https://theiowastandard.com/punished-for-faith-governmental-entity-terminates-contract-with-ministry-over-religious-beliefs/
So glad these Republicans stood for TRUTH!
‘The Mahaska County Republicans unanimously voted to censure Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks following her vote in support of a bill codifying homosexual marriage, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and forcing Iowa to recognize anything another state decides qualifies as a “marriage.”
Here is the text:
“Her vote directly opposes the Mahaska County Republicans policy platform item #6 — family values:
“In keeping with the reality that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that our nation’s foundation and subsequent blessings flow from adherence to and respect for the Judeo-Christian ethic, we affirm the following: We support an amendment to the United States Constitution stating that “Only marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized in the United States, and that neither the Federal government, any state government, or the political subdivisions thereof may create or recognize a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals.”
“Her vote also directly opposes the Iowa Republican Platform, Liberty #13: “We believe that traditional, two-parent (one male (XY) and one female (XX)), marriage-based families are the foundation to a stable, enduring, and healthy civilization. We encourage the repeal of any laws allowing any marriage that is not between one natural man and one natural woman.”
“There is nothing more foundational to our society than marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman.
“Our Representative, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, directly opposes the expressed will of God and of her constituents and is hereby formally censured for her vote.”
The motion to censure Miller-Meeks was unanimously approved in a voice vote.’https://theiowastandard.com/mahaska-co-gop-censures-miller-meeks-says-she-directly-opposes-expressed-will-of-god-and-of-her-constituents/
‘Last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the “Pride Coalition.” The coalition is a partnership with the “Log Cabin Republicans,” an organization that describes itself as “LGBT conservatives and straight allies who support fairness, freedom, and equality for all.”
Although many find the move disheartening, it will only shock those who haven’t been paying attention. Al Mohler has described the relationship between Republicans and evangelicals as a “marriage of convenience.” In this case, marriage is a particularly painful and ironic metaphor.
And to be clear, the convenience in this marriage goes both ways. For many within the RNC, evangelicals are just one of several voting blocs, albeit an important one. For many evangelicals, the Grand Old Party (GOP) is simply a better fit than the alternative, given their stance on social issues like abortion, gender, and religious freedom. And, some on both sides are taken in by what quirky French theologian Jacques Ellul called “the political illusion.”
When all problems and all solutions are reduced to politics, all hope rests in gaining political power. Thus, when it comes to engaging in politics, Christians must always work to keep straight what are the means and what are the ends. A decision to partner with an LGBTQ group only makes sense if the “end” is to regain political power. The same decision, however, makes no sense if power is only the means and something else, such as limited government, is the end.
The problem with this coalition isn’t that some in the LGBTQ camp wish to support a political party of limited government. That’s been true for a long time. In contemporary politics’ pragmatic exercise, it never hurts to have unexpected allies vote for your candidate. However, welcoming voters to a political party is different than creating an alliance with a group that hopes to advance its own goals within a political platform. This particular coalition signals a change in the GOP’s platform and party positions, as well as broader changes in what it means to be “conservative.”
A core element of the GOP platform has long been so-called “family values,” sardonic shorthand for the party’s often inconsistently expressed and lived-out traditional moral framework. Key to this framework is the centrality of the nuclear family, the notion that marriage between one man and one woman who stay married is not merely a social construct but essential for both a healthy society and the wellbeing of the next generation. Therefore, it is the government’s task to protect the family, not redefine or deconstruct it. The more the government protects the family, the more non-governmental entities are able to collectively secure the future.
But, moral consensus around the nuclear family is only possible if it rests on grounds other than government. That requires grounding truth itself in something outside the government. Today, however, ours is what Os Guinness calls a “cut flower society.” Though we still have the trappings of so-called “family values,” no shared moral foundation remains for it. The quest for freedom has devolved into a pursuit for radical autonomy, especially in sexual matters.
All of which brings us back to this “coalition.” The RNC is mistaken to think that it is possible to be fiscally or politically conservative without, on some level, being culturally conservative first. You can’t have limited government while at the same time embracing a movement wishing to deconstruct and redefine marriage and the family since only the family reliably produces citizens able to govern themselves.
Whenever family fails, the state is compelled to step in. America’s founders, even with all their flaws, understood this. John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
Chuck Colson was fond of saying: “The Kingdom of God will never arrive on Air Force One.” We vote how we must and do what we can to love our neighbors in political ways, but we must not put our hope in candidates or parties as if political power for our party is the end. In a Christian view, political ends are never ultimate ends.
Christians must maintain a clear-headed vision of the importance of social issues in the public arena. That means determining what is true theologically, first, and then letting political chips fall where they may. As my friend, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly put it, “We must, lovingly and winsomely, never stop contending for the things that matter to God.” Family and marriage matter to God.’https://www.breakpoint.org/the-rncs-pride-coalition/
Paul plainly wrote in Romans 1:26,27 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
In spite of this clear teaching in God’s Word ‘A group of progressive United Methodists announced….they are forming a new Methodist denomination, the Liberation Methodist Connexion, or LMX.
For half a century, the United Methodist Church has debated the full inclusion of its LGBTQ members. It pushed any discussion of sexuality from its quadrennial General Conference meeting in 2016 to a special session in 2019, where delegates voted against allowing the church to ordain LGBTQ clergy or perform same-sex marriages.’
One of the BIGGEST MISTAKES a group of churches can do is to DEBATE the Word of God! Debating the Word of God is a clear indication that these Methodists do not see the Bible as their sole rule of faith and practice! Anyway, ‘A new plan has been proposed since then to split the denomination according to beliefs on LGBTQ ordination and same-sex marriage. The split was to be decided upon at the 2020 General Conference, but due to COVID-19 shutdowns, the conference was cancelled and the decision postponed until next fall at the earliest. United Methodists would’ve met this week to consider a split. What are they doing instead?
Some United Methodists eager for change have simply grown tired of waiting.
“The timeline of the Holy Spirit is driving our decision to launch LMX at this moment, and we are responding to that call,” the Rev. Althea Spencer-Miller said during a presentation Sunday evening following the denomination’s first online worship service.
The LMX seeks to embrace the “full participation of all who are living out their God-given identities and expressions,” according to the site. That includes people of all gender expressions and sexual identities, races and ethnicities, mental and physical abilities, sizes and ages.
Its theology “is not written in stone,” the website said, but it builds on Methodist theology with various expressions of Liberation theologies, which were first developed by Latin American Roman Catholics in the 1950s and 1960s.
Correct doctrine is less important to the new denomination than correct action, collaborators said during Sunday’s presentation. That action includes reparations, caring for the earth, and finding new ways to live together outside of systems like colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, clericalism and heteronormativity, they said.
“We seek not answers that lead us to correct doctrines as to why we suffer. We seek correct actions, correct praxis, where God sustains us during the unanswerable questions,” Spencer-Miller said.
More conservative Methodists, however, believe the new denomination veers from both orthodoxy (correct doctrine) and orthopraxy (correct actions).
Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy—a conservative Christian thinktank, which promotes its views among mainline Protestant churches—predicts the United Methodist Church will divide over these issues.
“As the United Methodist Church effectively dissolves, there are likely to be various shatterings,” Tooley told The Roys Report in a statement Wednesday. “At the very least, there will be a traditional global church, a liberal USA church, and a radical USA church, with perhaps several others. This Liberation Methodist Connexion will be the radical branch, or perhaps one of several radical branches. It will be hard long to cohere a denomination around Identity Politics and without core theology. . . . The United Methodist Church was created in 1968 mostly based on theological pluralism, which was an experiment that failed.”
However, leaders of the new denomination said those who join them aren’t expected to leave their denominations. In fact, collaborators said Sunday that United Methodist members are encouraged to continue to partner with the United Methodist Church’s ethnic caucuses.
“There are no doctrinal litmus tests in the movement. We are moving beyond the supremacy of a single belief system,” said the Rev. Janet G. McKeithen, a member of the Connexion working group.
It’s about following Jesus to the margins, added the Rev. Alex da Silva Souto, one of the leaders of UM-Forward and a General Conference delegate from the New York Conference.
Da Silva Souto said in May that a coalition of groups already describing themselves as Liberationists had been discussing the possibility of forming a new denomination. That discussion grew out of events — the UM-Forward summit in May 2019 in Minneapolis, an Advent gathering outside of Denver, a Lenten gathering this spring in Dallas — following a special session of the United Methodist General Conference in 2019.
The Traditional Plan favored by theologically conservative United Methodists, approved at that special session, was set to take effect earlier this year, strengthening language in the denomination’s Book of Discipline barring LGBTQ clergy from being ordained and same-sex couples from marrying in the United Methodist Church.
But United Methodist bishops and advocacy group leaders from across theological divides agreed to a moratorium on its enforcement in January after negotiating a proposal to split the denomination, called, “A Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation.” The proposal, negotiated by 16 United Methodists, would commit $25 million to create a new conservative “traditionalist” Methodist denomination. The “post-separation United Methodist Church” would then have the opportunity to rescind the Traditional Plan and pass affirming language.
Delegates would have voted on that proposal at the United Methodist General Conference scheduled in May. At the time, Da Silva Souto called its postponement, due to the pandemic, a “curveball.”
But, said Da Silva Souto, “we’re not waiting for the protocol to answer the call that we feel, which is love and liberation right now.”
The LMX is planning to host its next worship service on New Year’s Eve and encouraged those interested in joining to sign up for its email newsletter on its website.’https://julieroys.com/progressive-methodists-new-denomination/?mc_cid=e8a2ae265a&mc_eid=b13d34ad49
The LMX is a pawn in Satan’s family of apostate churches.
‘Following the media’s projection of his victory in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden has made “sweeping promises” to LGBT activists, according to The Associated Press.
Biden, a Democrat, plans to “carry out virtually every proposal” that LGBT activists have pushed for in recent years, the AP said. Biden’s agenda includes allowing individuals who identify as transgender to enlist in the military, as well as allow trans-identified servicemen to enter women’s-only areas (and vice versa), and cover trans-surgeries and cross-sex hormones for members of the military. He also plans to require all government contractors to have anti-LGBT discrimination policies, and will create LGBT rights positions at the State Department, National Security Agency, and other federal agencies.
The Biden campaign’s website includes a lengthy document detailing “the Biden plan to advance LGBTQ+ equality in America and around the world.”’https://www.christianpost.com/news/biden-makes-sweeping-promises-lgbt-activists-ban-soce-therapy-trans-athletes-girls-sports.html?uid=d3769f0ce2
‘In an Instagram post on Thursday, Carl Lentz, the lead pastor of Hillsong NYC, admitted he was “unfaithful” in his marriage, ending a day of speculation as to why he had been fired.
On Wednesday, Hillsong founding pastor Brian Houston notified staff and members of Hillsong East Coast by email of Lentz’s termination. The email, which was obtained by The Roys Report, cited “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures” as the reason for the firing but did not reveal more details, saying to do so “would not be appropriate.”
“I know this will come as a shock to you, but please know that this action was not taken lightly and was done in the best interests of everyone, including Pastor Carl,” Houston wrote.
In his Instagram post, Lentz admitted to being “unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life.”
“This failure is on me, and me alone and I take full responsibility for my actions,” according to the post.
“When you accept the calling of being a pastor, you must live in such a way that it honors the mandate. That it honors the church, and that it honors God. When that does not happen, a change needs to be made and has been made in this case to ensure that standard is upheld,” Lentz said in the post.
He expressed gratitude for his time at the church and said leading Hillsong NYC “has been an honor in every sense of the word.”
“This is a hard ending to what has been the most amazing, impacting and special chapter of our lives.”’https://julieroys.com/lentz-ousted-unfaithful-to-wife/?mc_cid=4b3777fbc5&mc_eid=b13d34ad49
whatyareckon 