Let me offer a brief but tragic history lesson, at least of more recent history. It has to do with self-professed enemies of the church, and how believers have responded to them. It especially has to do with whether or not the church has taken seriously these threats, or simply capitulated and compromised.
Sadly all too often it seems the threats are minimised while ignorant believers side with these opponents. It seems hardly a day goes by when I am not discussing this with yet another Christian who is so very clueless as to the war(s) we are involved in.
-We had clueless Christians siding with the communists during the Cold War.
-We have clueless Christians siding with Islam now.
-We have clueless Christians siding with the homosexual agenda now.
All three groups almost drive me to despair with their inability to think clearly and to perceive danger when it stares them in the face. No wonder the church keeps losing and losing and losing. When the church cannot or will not identify its own enemies, it is asking for trouble.
Let me amplify this just a bit. During the Cold War there were plenty of Christians who thought the best of godless communism and were utterly clueless as to its hostile and dangerous intention vis-a-vis the church. They actually became apologists for Marxism in the West. Lenin referred to these folks as “useful idiots”.
So too we have plenty of clueless wonders who have utterly no idea what Islam is about, and how it has no intention of peacefully coexisting with Christianity. It expects everyone to submit to Allah and sharia, with Christians at best becoming second class citizens, or dhimmis under their rule. But there are way too many ignorant “Christians” siding with Islam even against fellow believers.
In the same way, we have the militant homosexual lobby which has clearly stated its aims and objectives, and how it is especially targeting the church. They know that when they can fully and finally silence the churches, then the last remaining opposition to their destructive agenda can be fully realised.
Yet there are masses of completely clueless Christians who know absolutely nothing about the radical homosexual agenda. So they too become woeful apologists for homosexualism, and they even attack their own. They actually buy all the lies and deception of the militants, and assail fellow Christians who stand for biblical truth.
Sadly I encounter this all the time. These folks are guilty of two gross errors. First, they seem to know little or nothing about the clear teachings of Scripture, and sorely lack in having any sort of a biblical worldview. They are certainly not thinking as Christians, but as pagans, at least on these sorts of issues.
Second, they are woefully ignorant and uninformed about the various ideologies and activist groups which have declared war on us. They just do not have a clue as to what the homosexual agenda is, or what Islam is all about, etc. So out of that rampant ignorance they live in la la land, thinking all is sweetness and light.
It gets worse however: they really do believe that it is all the church’s fault that our enemies exist, eg., that homosexuals exist, that they have declared war on faith and family, and so on. Instead of calling sin, sin, they excuse sin, and blame Christians. I have had a gutful of this to be honest.
Have Christians sometimes done less than the best in representing Christ to a fallen world in general, and to homosexuals in particular? Sure. But that is really beside the point. Sin is always at war with righteousness. Sinners are always at war with God. Militant anti-Christian groups exist because they hate God, the church, and Christians.
But these clueless Christian say we need to be nicer and more affirming and loving and tolerant. Yeah right. I have news for these folks. There was no more loving, gracious and welcoming person on the planet than Jesus Christ, yet he was hated and rejected among men, and sent to the cross.
He could not have been any more loving, yet people still hated him with a passion. And Jesus promised us unequivocally that just as the world hated him, so it would hate us. Of course homosexuals hate those who speak to them truth about their sinful lifestyle and offer them the good news that they can change if they want to.
But many do not want to change and they exult in their sin, rebellion and immorality. They hate true Christians because they will not condone their sin or make excuses for it. And this is where the clueless Christians come into play here: these so-called believers actually end up siding with the unrepentant and make excuses for their sin, while attacking true believers who stand on the Word of God.
I was going to go into a bit more detail on all this, but I just came across an article written by Sue Bohlin which covers much the same ground, so why reinvent the wheel? Let me conclude with some quotes from her piece, “Why Have So Many Christians and Churches Become Pro-Gay?”
Reason One: Rejecting the Authority of God’s Word
The bitter fruit of several decades of shallow preaching, teaching and discipleship is that many believers have been especially vulnerable to Satan’s deceptive question to Eve in the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say . . .?” When Christians ignore or flat-out reject the unmistakably clear biblical statements condemning homosexual relationships, they are playing into the enemy’s temptation to justify disobedience by making feelings and perceptions more important than God’s design and standards.
But since she spends time quoting from a homosexual book that I was going to quote from, let me more fully run with her second reason:
Reason Two: Snagged by the Gay Agenda
In addition to those several decades of shallow preaching, teaching and discipleship I mentioned earlier, many believers have not been submitting themselves to the truth of the Word of God. By default, then, they were easily shaped and swayed by the six points of a brilliantly designed “Gay Manifesto” spelled out in a book called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s. Originally published as an essay called “The Overhauling of Straight America” that was published in a gay magazine, the authors laid out this plan which has been executed perfectly in the United States. (The quotes below are from the essay, found here)
1. Desensitization and normalization of homosexuals in mainstream America. Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and often as possible.
“The principle behind this advice is simple: almost any behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances….
2. Portray members of the LGBTQ community as victims. Indoctrinate mainstream America that members of the LGBTQ community were “born this way.”
“In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector.”…
3. Give protectors a just cause: anti-discrimination
“Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme.”
4. The use of TV, music, film and social media to desensitize mainstream Americans to their plight as gay people
Over the past 25 years, gay characters, on TV especially, have captured the hearts of American viewers because they were attractive, funny, smart—the kind of characters viewers would like to be. No one was shown the dark underside of gay bars and bathhouses, or same-sex domestic violence, or having to get one’s HIV+ status checked.
5. Portray gays and lesbians as pillars in society. Make gays look good.
“From Socrates to Shakespeare, from Alexander the Great to Alexander Hamilton, from Michelangelo to Walt Whitman, from Sappho to Gertrude Stein, the list is old hat to us but shocking news to heterosexual America. In no time, a skillful and clever media campaign could have the gay community looking like the veritable fairy godmother to Western Civilization.”
Use celebrities and celebrity endorsement. And who doesn’t love Ellen DeGeneres?
6. Once homosexuals have begun to gain acceptance, anti-gay opponents must be vilified, causing them to be viewed as repulsive outcasts of society.
“Our goal is here is twofold. First, we seek to replace the mainstream’s self-righteous pride about its homophobia with shame and guilt. Second, we intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.
She finishes with these words:
This is how I see how we got to this place where so many people have been deceived. They didn’t anchor themselves to the Truth of the Word of God, and they opened themselves to the cultural brine of Kirk and Madsen’s plan to overhaul straight America.
And it worked.
Yep, it sure has. We now have millions of deceived Christians who think waving a rainbow flag or pushing the vacuous “love wins” mantra is the epitome of Christian discipleship. They are just as deceived and blinded as are the homosexual activists. And they are doing their work for them.
The militants sit back and laugh at all the clueless Christians, or “useful idiots,” who are doing their dirty work for them. Ignorant or willingly apostate Christians are destroying the faith on behalf of the activists, yet they actually think they are somehow being great Christians.
Now that is some deception. And as Scripture warns, it is likely to get even worse.
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