A WARNING TO THE CHURCH IN AMERICA

By  Dr. Scott Lively, President, Defend the Family International

www.defendthefamily.com, June 13, 2013

You may have heard of me.  I am the pastor being sued in U.S. Federal Court for “Crimes Against Humanity” for preaching against homosexuality in Uganda.  But I am really a “Canary in the Coal Mine,” with a warning for every Bible-believing Christian in our land, especially pastors and ministry leaders.

The American church is about to come under spiritual and cultural warfare the likes of which we have never seen and which most are not prepared for.  The attacks will come from every corner of the secular world to challenge, condemn and punish us for our beliefs about homosexuality.  These attacks will split denominations, congregations and even Christian families to a degree and with an intensity that will shock even those who have experienced the first ripples of “gay” conflict in the church over the past few decades.  Large numbers of self-identified Christians will begin embracing so-called “Gay Theology,” and some will actually join the attacks against the remnant who stand firm on the truth.  The pressure to give in to escape the psychological and sometimes physical persecution of the Christian “homophobes” will be so great that I believe a majority of church-goers will succumb, and a great many pastors will choose to “change with the times,” so as not  to lose “their” church.

This collapse of the Christian infrastructure of America is, in my opinion, already in progress and  irreversible because it is part of God‘s judgment.  The “end-times” revival which many, including myself, expect and eagerly await will not stop this collapse, but will in fact hasten it by strengthening the remnant in their obedience to Christ while hardening the world (and fallen Christians) against us.  The crisis will be so pervasive that no-one will be spared the choice of embracing or rejecting Biblical truth on this topic.  The whole purpose of this trial is to test the strength of believers to endure greater troubles ahead.

We shouldn’t be surprised that God is using this issue as our test.  A careful examination of His Word shows that open homosexuality in the Bible is symbolic of extreme rebellion against God leading to judgment.  Thus, unique in all of scripture, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire and brimstone as the examplar of God’s wrath (2 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7, Genesis 19:1-12), male on male sodomy is listed as the most heinous sin on the short list of sins which caused the land to “vomit out” the Canaanites from the territory promised to Abraham (Leviticus 18:1-30, esp. 22),  and both male and female homosexuality are together identified as the examplar of the depraved or “reprobate” mind that defines the age of apostasy leading to Christ‘s return (Romans 1:18-32, 2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Noah’s Flood was preceded by the “marrying and giving in marriage” (Matt 24:37-40) of people whose thoughts were “only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), evidence which the ancient Hebrew scholars interpreted as “gay marriage,” the final insult to God which unleashed the deluge.  And in the final book of the Bible, just prior to the return of Christ to “judge and make war” against His enemies (Rev 19:11ff), Jerusalem under the Antichrist is “mystically called Sodom and Egypt,” signifying its essential association (I believe) with homosexuality and Islam respectively (Revelation 11:3-8).

Even 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, the “ex-gay” passage that proves that healed and recovered homosexuals were a part of the church from its earliest days, warns that unrepentant homosexuals “will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  There is no room, even when we emphasize compassion for homosexual sufferers, to condone homosexual relationships or worse, to claim that homosexuality is blessed by God as a normal, intended variant of human sexuality.

My life’s work has been to stand against the (increasingly successful) assault of the homosexual movement on Biblical values in our society and around the world.  My nearly 25 years of full time, front lines ministry on this battlefield has given me special insights and understanding of this issue.  My refusal to be silenced by a long series of increasingly more dishonest and aggressive attacks on my work and reputation has familiarized me both with persecution and with the tactical “playbook” of the “gay” movement.  I am thus issuing my warning to the church not so much as a prophesy (though it is confirmed in my spirit), but as the natural conclusion of deductive reasoning by a front-lines analyst with a unique vantage-point.  In support of that conclusion, I offer the following observations.

First, on June 28, 1969 the goal of the American homosexual movement shifted from tolerance (the right to be left alone) to control (the complete restructuring of society in its own image, with “gays“ or their surrogates in all seats of power).  Its tactics shifted from civil dialogue to implacable militancy.  That was the date of the Stonewall Riot in New York City, today celebrated annually as “Gay Pride Day.” Logically, this movement cannot achieve its goal without replacing the Biblical social ethic of marriage-based heterosexual monogamy and the natural family with its own philosophy of unlimited “sexual freedom” (which is in reality moral anarchy).  In short, the true and necessary goal of the “gay” movement is the defeat of Christianity.

Second, in the space of just forty years homosexual militants have defeated every secular institution in their path in the United States.  The first to fall was the American Psychiatric Association in 1973, when “gay” activists, using Brownshirt tactics of disruption and intimidation, forced the APA to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV.  The most recent and final secular institution to fall was the Boy Scouts of America in 2013 when the BSA leadership voted to allow openly self-declared homosexual boys into the organization.  The next-to-last entity to fall was the U. S. military.  In both cases, the first news following the capitulation was of uniformed members of each organization marching triumphantly in “Gay Pride” parades.

Third, the “gays” have always intended to attack the church in the final stage of their conquest of our culture.  As early as 1987 they openly admitted this plan in an article called The Overhauling of Straight America, which later became the basis for the book After the Ball, which has ever since been their primary strategic blueprint.  They wrote:

When conservative churches condemn gays…we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred and inconsistency. Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one must set the mightier draw of Science & Public Opinion (the shield and sword of that accursed “secular humanism”). Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such topics as divorce and abortion. …. At a later stage…it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be vilified.  (Guide Magazine, November 1987)

Frankly, even at this late stage of the game, much of the church seems to be still asleep or in denial about the state of our culture.  Even many conservative Christian leaders who are awake to the seriousness of the crisis are only dimly aware that the culture war at its foundation is and has always been a winner-take-all contest between Christians and homosexual activists.  Now that the last secular barriers to the “gay” agenda have been crushed, all of their weapons and all of their warriors will be focused on the last remaining obstacle to their power, the Christian church.

What comes next is a full-on homosexual blitzkrieg against “homophobia” and “hatred” in the church, and a concurrent culture-wide advocacy of “gay theology.”  Gone, of course, will be all concern for the “separation of church and state” as the secular powers work hand-in-hand with the “gays” to shame and “correct” the Bible-believing church, using Scripture that has been deviously twisted to fit their goals.  The only defense will be Biblical literacy backed unshakable faith.  To be blunt, we will be all be vilified and only the strong of faith will endure.

To be sure, one’s view of homosexuality is not necessarily a salvation issue, but one’s ability to cling to Christ through persecution may well be.  Will a person too spiritually weak or cowardly to defend Biblical truth on such a clear and fundamental teaching be strong enough to resist the Mark of the Beast?  During a time of testing such as we are entering, the Prophet Jeremiah put it this way: “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”

It might not be noticeable now, but their campaign has been launched and will steadily increase in breadth, depth and persuasiveness.  Remnant, be prepared, and share this warning.