Nonetheless, we always continue to proclaim God's glories and urge one and all of the pagans to repent, and then we exhort for for one and all of the brethren to adhere to His standards. He is God, holy and high, and He knows best. It is as simple as that.
Romans 1:18-32 shows us the process of a downward progression of a culture when the majority of its populace refuses to repent. Please bear with me as I post the entire passage.
God’s Wrath on Unrighteousness
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,g in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
The NASB says of the last verse that they give "hearty approval" to them that practice those things.
Hearty approval.
This aspect of the hearty approval statement indicates not just individual sin, and not just collective sin, but also enticement into sin. In addition, giving hearty approval to sin involves a tipping point. This involves peer pressure and groupthink. When a group practicing the sin increases in numbers, at a certain point, there is more pressure to perform the sin than there was to hide the sin or not engage in it at all. The original people or group doing the sin paid the shame price in the culture for having been found out, but after a while the shame wore off and more and more people fornicated, were adulterers, homosexuals, lesbians, bigamists,
Remember back in the day when premarital sex was talked about in hushed whispers? When a mother bearing an illegitimate child was hustled off to another location because she (and the father) had brought shame onto the family? When homosexuality was a considered a perversion and never discussed, let alone approved of? Now there are television shows which feature gays in 'marriages' as normal, men in marriages to multiple wives, lesbians casually kissing on television. The hearty approval is that the ratings of these television shows and movies get higher ratings with this kind of content in it.
We've seen this since the 1950s with premarital sex. We've seen this since the late 1960s with fornicating outside of marriage and with adultery. No-fault divorce is one of the major causes of the former. We've seen this with homosexuality since the 1970s. In the 1980s with the advent of cable television and a wider latitude for exposing the audience to worse language, bloodier violence, and more sex. By the 1990s the tidal wave of sin in the world being reflected on tv and other media, and then reflected back to approving audiences was firmly entrenched. 1993's movie with Tom Hanks (Philadelphia) about an HIV-positive homosexual man was Hollywood's first mainstream movie with a gay as the main character as sympathetic. Cut to 20 years beyond that date and we are awash with an upside down world where sin is heartily approved of and those not wishing to participate in sin are the odd ones out.
Now we have a pastor of a conservative Southern Baptist church changing his mind on the issue of homosexuality being sinful (he says it isn't) and is accepting of his gay son's lifestyle. He calls himself a "gay-affirming pastor" but it is just being sin-affirming. And a sin-affirming pastor is an oxymoron.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
In just 20 years, half a generation, we've gone from President Clinton's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" being about homosexuals in military service to don't ask don't tell about Christians in military service.
Wretched Radio brings us this photo of a greeting card section of Walgreen's
And this one really hurts.
Sir Elton John says Jesus would support gay marriage: 'He was all about love'
Sir Elton John has said he believes that Jesus would be a supporter of gay marriage. The “Daniel” singer, who hopes to marry filmmaker David Furnish next year, said he thinks that the Christian figure would have supported the union of gay members of the clergy. Speaking to Sky News on the same weekend as the London Pride parade, Sir Elton said: “If Jesus Christ was alive today, I cannot see him, as the Christian person that he was and the great person that he was, saying this could not happen. “He was all about love and compassion and forgiveness and trying to bring people together. “And that is what the Church should be about.”
Nope I was wrong. This next part of the above article hurts worse.
But the chart-topping artist said that the Church deserved credit for the progress that has been made in recent years. He heaped particular praise onto the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis, whom he described as a “wonderful” man who had stripped back church teaching to reveal its fundamental message of love.Yes. They heartily approve.
