Category Archives: Discipleship

citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

It’s Been A Long Ride, Zuckman, But It Seems We Have “Irreconcilable Differences”

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(Photo credit: Isaac Steele)

Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.  – Luke 6:26

We haven’t had the actual breakup yet, Mr. Z, but it seems all but inevitable that it’s coming.   Obviously, it’s not you, it’s us.

So, here “standerinfamilycourt” sits again in “Facebook Jail” for 30 days on a “fifth offense” (which you didn’t even bother to identify).    That means, in practical terms, that the community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional can only be updated on the platform of your competitor, MeWe, until the end of the third week in May.   It also means that UDIU can disappear without notice from Facebook at the very next deemed “offense” (but as I’ll explain below, that was already at unavoidable risk of happening soon anyway under a new algorithm that’s coming).

All of the aforesaid official “violations” have occurred in matters external to our community page, and on issues external to our campaign to abolish unilateral, forced divorce laws, or to warn people that the wages of adulterous remarriage following man’s divorce is death (unless repented by exiting the union).   That content turns out to be not nearly so “offensive” to the tech Overlords as heretical statements challenging the New World Order (NWO) state religion: CCP-Dominant Globalist Technocracism in more general terms such as “vaccine” noncompliance, environmental debunking, rejecting “Critical Race Theory” as inherently racist and sexist, and wearing face-diapers as destroying (what’s left of) our immune systems for no health benefit.   None of these things is a topic for our pro-family pages, however, other than incidentally (parents’ rights, etc.).

When we first met many years ago, you were willing to show our page to anyone who wanted to see – and all to their friends, as well.   You were willing to let SIFC shell out a few bucks to get blog posts and other material “boosted” to an even larger audience, typically in the few thousands.   It was a win-win situation, or so we thought.  That is, it was win-win until the 45th U.S. President Donald J. Trump took his oath of office, threatening your societal dominance, and you suddenly decided this business arrangement was “political advertising” for which we must henceforth “register”.   Since it seemed a 1st amendment violation to “register” in order to maintain an ongoing commercial agreement, we continued to use your service and you continued to take our money without our actually registering as a “political advertiser” — as if we were some sort of lobbying firm abusing the democratic process by bribing officials (the way you routinely do).  Then, one day, you noticed that you had been disobeyed, and you banned us from the “felony” of boosting posts, henceforth and forevermore.     By then, your vengeful campaign of shadow-banning all views that displeased your “woke” corporate sensibilities, or that might re-elect the President, was well underway, but our number of page followers still continued to grow.
(By that time, we no longer wanted to “monetize” your own nefarious political plans anyway, without yet even realizing how dastardly, unlawful and abusive those plans were.)

Then came …. “the trainings”.   Facebook started offering them to group page administrators, framed as all “good news”.    SIFC smelled a rat, and instead relied on a third-party consultant’s version of the training aimed at maximizing “organic” reach and exposure, to see how the ramp-up in “shadow-banning” of socially-conservative content would impact Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, our community page.    The first round of such trainings came shortly before the 2020 election cycle kicked in for the U.S.    It turned out that at that time, we were already doing a lot of the things the marketing consultant recommended, and though we were still hit by the algorithm change, we had already been so severely targeted in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory, losing to Zuckerberg political spite a good 80% of our “reach” (our 800+ page followers’ ability to regularly see our posts in their “feeds” so that they can “like”, “reshare”, and comment),  the effect on our page reach from the last algorithm change was still relatively mild through 2020 to today.    Not so for the remainder of 2021, however, with the latest algorithm change reportedly being rolled out over the next few weeks.   (To be clear, we don’t push political parties or candidates on this blog or its social media pages.    We’re politically independent here, but we do unabashedly and unapologetically push biblical family structure and biblical morality on these pages.)

So, SIFC attended an updated independent marketing reach training this past week, just before landing again in the Facebook “slammer” ….and learned all of the following:

1.  The average reach for all Facebook group / “business” pages is only 1 to 2% of opted-in page followers.   We’re still averaging a bit better than that under the algorithm that’s about to be replaced, but in our early days, it was more like 30-50%, and some of our posts were able to go semi-viral.

2.  A flag like this will be put on any page that features content the Overlords, or someone complaining, find objectionable (purportedly, diminishing their individual “FB experience“).   In other words, some of us will be getting what amounts to a “snowflake” flag when they click the “Follow” button.    One thing that the Zuck horde has invariably found objectionable since 2016 is any such page having a noticeable following or viral posts.   We have been guilty on more than one occasion of the latter.


3.  You plan to ramp up your shadow-banning that allowed pages like ours with a loyal following to fall through your distraction cracks up to this point.    To “correct” this, you plan to push us down in our followers’ feed priority if we regularly re-share the excellent materials from others that makes our page so rich and creates a “digest” that is valuable to our followers.    You plan to shadow-ban us unless we create “original” content on a daily basis.   You plan to shadow-ban us if any of our admins have personally run afoul of your so-called “Community Standards” anywhere in your system.  You plan to algorithmically shadow-ban us, we hear, if we don’t respond to each and every commenter on each and every post.

4.   You plan to use this newly-revised algorithm to take things even a step further, we hear, for “recidivist” page owners and admins who are social media “ex-cons”.   What legal right have you, Mr. Z, to take our page down without notice, or even an explanation going forward, just because someone, anyone complains to you of being ideologically offended?    Don’t you know that people were ideologically offended by Jesus Christ – who walked on water?
(Yes, indeed,  it’s not you, it’s us. )

5.  Your use of washed-up ex-CNN political hacks as “fact checkers” deliberately spreads far more disinformation than our page could ever inadvertently accomplish.    This is no excuse for shadow-banning.   Provide actual evidence to us that we misposted, and ask us to take in down.   Problem solved.

Okay…. so we don’t currently add much to your revenue model (by your own action choices, we remind, not ours), except a small-but-loyal advertising audience for other sponsors.  It’s not like we made this choice – on either level.  You unilaterally cut off this steady revenue offered to you by us, some 4 or 5 years ago.      You are now willing to cut off your revenue nose to spite your other-sponsor face by deliberately cutting us off from our mostly church-going page  followers (the “deplorables”).    Since there are now quite a few fish in the sea these days when it comes to social media platforms,  SIFC agrees with you that there’s just not much left in our long relationship.     Hence, this divorce, if and when it comes, will be by mutual consent.
————————————————–
To our page followers (many of whom run Facebook group or community pages of their own), we wanted to give you a heads-up that there is more than a potential chance our page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional,  will disappear from Facebook entirely in the near future with no notice, and almost a certainty that you will think it has disappeared, even if it actually hasn’t, because you may no longer see it in your news feed by next month, and will have navigate there yourself.    We wanted to give you an advance opportunity to understand all the reasons why, take a few quick steps to possibly delay this happening,  and where to go to find us again if or when we do “disappear” from your social media experience (and you miss us).

“Standerinfamilycourt” is on a 5th violation of Facebook’s so-called “Community Standards”, with the very next “offense” permanently shutting down personal wall and (potentially) all associated pages.    Meanwhile, there is a gene-manipulation treatment out there which the FDA unlawfully approved on an “emergency” basis, given the number of effective treatments that objectively are available, and the less than 1% population death rate among those who contract the Wuhan Flu.    This is not technically a “vaccine” by the prior established definition, but an unlawful label achieved through financial corruption.    That “vaccine” is literally killing thousands of people in each country where it’s being pushed, and ushering some of those thousands prematurely into hell, or permanently maiming them in this life.   With the exception of the French brand, Sanofi, that “vaccine” is produced on the backs of aborted fetuses, despite much propaganda that this isn’t the case.    That “vaccine” was the obscenely-lucrative brainchild of a man who thinks there are too many people in the world.    Several highly respected immunologists around the world are warning that millions more “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” people will die next fall and winter due to the intentional destruction of their natural immune systems and due to viral particle “shedding” from the “vaccinated” to the “unvaccinated”.  The U.S. government, while currently not the only one, is in the hands of perhaps dozens of people whom all the international forensic cyber-evidence shows, conclusively, were not legitimately elected.    They do not have the consent of the governed, and they will not guarantee the citizens of the U.S. the republican form of government the U.S. Constitution promises.   The media propaganda around all of these issues is coming straight from the Chinese Communist Party, and is disseminated daily by bribed national traitors.   Every statement just listed in this paragraph, though demonstrably true, violates Facebook’s “Community Standards” and is sure to thoroughly offend most of their target audience for paying sponsors: hence, irreconcilable differences.   Since there’s no monetization involved, there is nothing to split in our parting, just “custody” of 800+ aggrieved page followers.

Even so, SIFC (as an individual) cannot conscionably remain silent online about any of these issues, even though they are not normally carried on either the blog page or the social media community pages.   We must nevertheless have a functioning constitutional republic in order to continue to make any appeal that unilateral, forced divorce is unconstitutional.    There is very little the nation’s leaders actually do these days that is constitutional, including bring the true insurrectionists to justice in order to secure the republic’s survival as anything but a banana republic.

Some suggested intermediate actions (also a good idea for similar group pages to adopt):

1.   Go over to MeWe, where we’ve been running parallel since January, knowing that this was coming.    Sign up and hit the follow button over there.    On May 1, there will be a poll on MeWe asking what alternative free speech platforms our followers are on.
Could you do SIFC the huge favor of responding to that quick poll?  We’ll also keep people updated over there about what’s happening on our Facebook page.   We’ll be on MeWe (and at least one or two other platforms) when and if our page is banned entirely by Mr, Zuck.  We will soon try to get parallel running going on Gab, and possibly one additional platform such as Frankspeech.

2.   Go to our Facebook page header where the “follow” button is.   Use the drop-down menu and select “See First” .   This is old advice but is increasing in its importance with the new algorithm.

3.  Please message our FB page if you ever see the  “snowflake” flag when attempting to hit the “Follow” button on our page.

4.  Try to drop some sort of comment or other interaction on our posts, if you possibly can.   SIFC will try to be more diligent in the future (for as long as we’re up, anyway) to timely acknowledge your comment in some way.    This may help keep our posts in your feed.   SIFC won’t be allowed by FB to respond until late May, however.

5.  Other marriage permanence group page owners: if our content is appropriate for your page you can snapshot / paste (for “original” appearing content), or reshare  our MeWe content (and especially this blog post) to your page.   Try putting its actual link in the comments section rather than the body of the post on your page, and explain to your page audience why in the body).  One of the most obnoxious and damaging features of being forced to spend  time in the “Zuckslammer”, for something entirely unrelated to our community page, is the inability to let people know why our page was forced into dormancy, as well as engage in appropriate “troll control”.    Thirty days is an eternity on social media.

6.  If other group pages (standers, parents’ rights) want their materials shared on UDIU, feel free to use the “post to page” feature, since it will start to harm “organic reach” for both of us if we re-share.    Best to wait until SIFC is “sprung”, however, to make sure it can be moderated and seen.    Try not to include a direct link, in the body of the piece, that navigates away from FB – SIFC soooo apologizes for this request, but doing so reduces distribution under the planned new “alg”.    SIFC is unsure at this point whether posting the external link in the comments section is a good workaround, we’ll just have to try it and see.   (Be sure to also share material on our MeWe page!)

7.  Subscribe to this blog “7 Times Around the Jericho Wall” (www.standerinfamilycourt.com) for email notification of new posts, and as a fallback connection to our social media pages.    Scroll down to the bottom of any blog post, and click “notify me of new posts”.

To sum up, Mr. Z & company has been on a long political crusade to isolate conservative voices from one another if they refuse to self-censor, and to prevent the concentration of the conservative message by any and every means available:  reputational smearing, shadow-banning, false accusations and permanent banning, demonetizing, rewarding snitches and trolls, difficult-to-implement or expensive operating conditions, etc. etc. etc. versus the original operating model.   As many of our social conservative peer groups have complained, it’s increasingly about dominance, control — shoving aside the values, culture and morals of America’s founding fathers to make a wider berth for cultural Marxism, and eventually, full-on communism.    Their vision cannot coexist with strong families, biblical values, the rule of law, nor the values and promises in the Bill of Rights.

If we just lie down and take it, however, they win.

Are they servants of Christ?—I am speaking as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.   Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent adrift at sea.  I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers;  I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.  Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.   –  2 Corinthians 11:23-28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, family law, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Help – I Want to Get Out of My Adulterous Remarriage, But Can’t

5 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  – 1 John 4:1

The moment a blogger attempts to rescue perishing souls and dares to connect the cultural soul-poison of remarriage adultery with its biblical eternal outcome (“do not be deceived, no adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God” – 1 Cor. 6:9), it amounts to nothing less than kicking satan’s hornet nest in mid-summer.  Trust us, satan fights hard to control and manipulate those souls – often doing so by fear of doom!

Once hardened to the straightforward protests because the focus is unwaveringly on souls, the evil one will regroup to bring on challenges that also attempt to challenge our compassion here at
“7 Times Around the Jericho Wall.”    A couple of those potent challenges can be seen in the comments to one blog post from about a year ago:
“HOW DO I KNOW WHETHER GOD JOINED MY FIRST MARRIAGE?”

Typically, the person bringing the challenge truly does have circumstances where there are enormous, and even dire barriers to ceasing to cohabit with a faux spouse as a necessary element of true repentance.    In other situations, the person is merely impersonating such a person in a truly sick attempt to discredit God’s word, and to discredit any such ministry by challenging the compassion of both.  From where this blogger sits, discerning between these types of encounters doesn’t always come easy – and we’ve been at this for almost seven years now.

In this post, some of the common characteristics of this kind of challenge will first be explored, for discernment purposes.
Then, a few generic, practical suggestions for this sort of impossible situation will be at least offered – which may or may not “land”  well, depending upon one’s true heart condition.    We shall then finish off by connecting the advice in this post with the new geopolitical reality that landed on January 20, 2021 in the United States.

Characteristics of a typical “compassion” challenger (in no particular order):

(1) they insist they have no options to physically exit an illicit living arrangement  (no money, no health, no friends, no relations, can’t afford a lawyer,  noncovenant dependent children, etc.)

(2) they are persistent if they don’t get the answer from this blog site that they hoped for, making repetitive arguments numerous times.

(3) their inquiry typically makes apparent that they haven’t read the blog post they are challenging, or its related links very thoroughly.

(4) they insist they have been praying about their situation for quite some time, and God has been silent, so they need an urgent answer from us.  They openly assert that they expect us to peer into their heart and speak for God, or the consequences will be dire for them.

(5) they often assert that they are living celibate in their faux marriage in a distant part of the adulterous home.    (What could be the harm in that?)

The more of these elements that are present in an inquiry, especially a redundant (“but you don’t understand my circumstances”) inquiry, the greater the suspicion that we’re really dealing with an impersonator – one of the demonic individuals bent on countering the movement who is quite deft in taking on various personas, and has many years practice at it.    Within reason, we always seek to be open in the blog comments to earnest questions, but the days do grow short, our extensive  blogsite is keyword-searchable, and any expectation that we will be such bad time stewards as to regurgitate a previous blog post in response to an individual inquiry comment is (frankly) badly misplaced.

Practical Suggestions for Exiting Immoral Cohabitation When  Resources Are Limited

When it comes to adulterous remarriages, unilateral, “no-fault” divorce, while profoundly unconstitutional, can be a good thing.  Unless one happens to live in the state of Mississippi, nobody living in the U.S. can legitimately argue that they “can’t” get a relatively cheap civil divorce because their faux spouse refuses to cooperate.   One could even reasonably argue that as of the date this past week when SCOTUS formally declined to hear the last of the many election fraud / foreign election interference cases, we now have to live as Christ-followers in a barbaric society that no longer has a functioning U.S. Constitution because of six  or so current justices who appear to be badly compromised – but more about that near the end of this post.

I am reminded of a top-ten ditty back in the 1970’s here, called “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”…

But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

While the context here is obviously a paperless immoral cohabitation, are these not actually the same in God’s eyes as the papered-over situation where God’s  word tells us He doesn’t recognize the paper?    Some godly, high-integrity marriage permanence pastors,  who are well-deserving of any Christ-follower’s deep respect will insist that God expects obtaining a civil divorce out of an adulterous remarriage, for “true” repentance to be complete.   I respectfully disagree, both based on the lack of such a requirement in scripture, and the logic that Jesus taught that “divorce” is strictly a tradition of men (Matthew 19:8).   In other words, there is nothing to “dissolve” in the case of adulterous remarriage, nor is it a “sin” to live reconciled with the covenant spouse of one’s youth without a second ceremony, because man’s paper did not “dissolve” that original state of holy matrimony.
This biblical fact has long been an important consideration in the event that unilateral no-fault divorce laws were ever to be appropriately judged unconstitutional and individual state laws changed to require mutual consent to “divorce”.     

Obviously in most cases, a legal dissolution and reconsecrating of covenant marriage vows in reconciliation cases is desirable, but the point is that not doing them, reconciled or unreconciled, will never keep a repenting, regenerated person out of heaven, according to scripture.    Ditto for Catholic “annulments”.
For the unreconciled, God alone sees into every heart to gauge how open a repenting person truly is to God bringing back their estranged true spouse into the holy matrimony home, which is precisely why demands or pleas that “standerinfamilycourt” give assurances of heaven based on so-called  “heart repentance” are badly misplaced.   Only God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit can ever give that kind of assurance, and only those who are regenerated (“born again”) have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, according to scripture.

To circle back around to the main point, the only biblically-based requirements for exiting an adulterous “remarriage” as a regenerated person, and being fully reconciled with God are:
(1) leave the illicit home permanently
(2) sincerely desire to be reconciled to your true spouse whether or not that appears possible, and whether or not godless society persecutes you for it.    (They probably will, and you won’t ever fool God on this one.)

Whom does scripture say should be providing for an indigent / disabled believer who believes they literally have nowhere to go if they exit their immoral cohabitation?

A big clue can be found in 1 Timothy 5:

Honor widows who are actually widows; but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to show proper respect for their own family and to give back compensation to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.  Now she who is actually a widow and has been left alone has set her hope on God, and she continues in requests and prayers night and day. But she who indulges herself in luxury is dead, even while she lives.  Give these instructions as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Obviously, back in the 1st century church, “divorcees” were nearly non-existent because the church of Jesus Christ never recognized man’s “divorce” nor “annulment”,  and God has always spelled “divorce” as follows:  D-E-A-T-H.     However, in context of today’s immorality inside and outside the church, we have a lot of figurative “widows” and “widowers” for whom the only remarriage that is legitimate is back to their covenant spouse.    It seems not unreasonable that arrangements should be made first with extended family, and failing that, with the church – including the body of other covenant marriage standers, many of whom could benefit from having a roommate while they await the repentance of their own covenant spouse.   Many of these standers will themselves have come out of an adulterous “remarriage” and have skills and space to take care of a disabled repenter.   Most disabled people in the U.S. at least qualify for some level of sustaining state and Federal benefits, including Social Security, that could help ease the financial burden on the care-giving family member or fellow stander.    Many covenant marriage standers’ groups can be found on Facebook or online web pages these days where connections can be made with solid Christian stander communities, and a few of those links will be listed at the end of this post.

As for continuing to live celibate in one’s adulterous household, this notion is quite common, in particular, with Catholic-background people where that church officially condoned this practice as part of its broader contemporary compromise of true biblical marriage indissolubility.    These folks will often say they can’t get an “annulment”,  so this is their “solution”.    There are several kingdom of God problems with this kind of “solution”.    I personally like the response a commenter recently made to this issue on the blog post linked above, though this (characteristically) didn’t satisfy the inquirer:

“We are here as witnesses to the unsaved and the world watches us – we are told in 1 Thess 5:22 to ‘abstain from all appearances of evil’ – Why would a sister be living with another sister’s husband? the ‘appearance’ still exists.

“Would you ask a sister – to live with another woman’s husband? Is that seen to the world as ‘chaste and separate’?

“God who designed marriage – also provides all the tools needed for reconciliation – ‘disabled, isolated and no income or the ability to obtain income’ – are no obstacles to God – providing you have a genuine heart to reconcile – he can and will do what you can’t – if you do what you can….”

(Amen!)

The Big Picture is Drastically Changing – For the Worse:

To close out, “standerinfamilycourt” believes strongly that the relatively-affluent and the poor alike, in this nation of the United States have a high risk of losing all or almost all of our creature comforts in the not-too-distant future, as usurped Marxist  rule makes further inroads to eliminating our national path back to a constitutional republic.     In the U.S., the extreme dysfunction and compromised state of all three branches of the Federal government (plus the military) has been exposed since the November 3, 2020 election, such that constitutional separation-of-powers are rendered almost completely inoperative, hence checks and balances on outright crime and treason in office are rendered effectively “moot”.   This sadly occurred with  the acquiescence of at least six of our nine SCOTUS justices, who likewise proved themselves unwilling to sacrifice personal comforts in order to do what’s right for the nation at a critical time.    The result is that, as one immorally-living set of top leaders replaces the next in the White House, our nation is left under illegitimate rule by those who came into office by what could justifiably be called sedition and Communist China Party purchased collusion (i.e. unprosecuted treason).    These illicit leaders have taken deliberate, unilateral actions in the first few weeks of their White House occupation to seriously break down the national defenses of our nation against these colluding foreign enemies, and we face many serious risks ranging from the “global reset” and collapsed financial currency to a widespread  attack on our electrical grid that could reportedly kill up to 90% of our population over a year’s time.

What a shame, on top of all these losses, to lose one’s soul as well, for the sake of shaky, disappearing material comforts!    Marxist regimes confiscate property at-will, and they wipe out livelihoods with the literal stroke of a pen.   They unleash bioweapons on their own people, and get rid of “the least of these” without a pang of conscience.   They deliberately go after true citizens of the kingdom of God for the way they live and for their convictions.    When God continues to allow this to happen without intervening after the normal channels fail to stop it, it’s a strong sign that His judgment on the nation is fully landing.  He is removing His hand of supernatural protection for the nation’s pervasive sexual immorality and, in particular, church leadership condoning the breakdown of the biblical family over decades of concurrent and consecutive polygamy, divorce and remarriage.  We’ve been “given over” to our own desires, and at that point, the only reversal of this sequence of events is for church leadership to reverse its course on the same.    We know this from following Israel’s history, and we can only hope that it’s not too late already!

“We have been unfaithful to our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land; yet now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.   So now let’s make a covenant with our God to send away all the wives and their children, following the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the Law.   Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, but we will be with you; be courageous and act.”

Then Ezra stood and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all Israel take an oath that they would do according to this proposal; so they took the oath.   Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. Although he went there, he did not eat bread nor drink water, because he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.   So they made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the exiles, that they were to assemble at Jerusalem,  and that whoever did not come within three days, in accordance with the counsel of the leaders and the elders, all his property would be forfeited, and he himself would be excluded from the assembly of the exiles.”  – from the Book of Ezra, chapter 10.

For this very reason our founding fathers repeatedly warned (I believe, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that we can only retain our constitutional republic through biblical morality.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 

Links to a few helpful covenant marriage standers sites where chaste connections can be made with other standers:

Covenant Marriage Standers (Facebook)

MADR (Facebook) 

Testimonies of Repentance from Adulterous Marriages  (Facebook)

Restoration of Christian Marriage (MarriageDivorce.com)

 

citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Count of God’s Gracious Blessings During the CCP* Virus Crisis

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  SIFC Note:  “CCP” stands for Communist Chinese Party

The last blog post in 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall was so sobering and heavy that it seems good to follow up with a lighter one on the same subject.     The Lord promised never to leave us nor forsake us, even when the whole world is in an uproar and evil is having a nearly unrestrained reign of terror.

The temptation here is to use a slick “top-ten” reverse countdown, but there are far more than ten “silver linings” observed by this blogger, and all of them are hugely important to the final outcome in our society from this crisis, so this will be a long list, and in no particular order.

1.  Millions of parents got back to parenting their own children, the way God has always designed.  (“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”)

2 . “Family courts” were slowed way down, delaying unnecessary divorces.   (All “divorces” out of our original covenant marriage are unnecessary by God’s definition – Matthew 19:6,8 – and He doesn’t recognize them under any circumstances.)

3.  We haven’t heard one thing about “drag queen story hour” in a month of Sundays.

4.  Ditto for the “urgent” need to mutilate the genitalia or alter the hormones  of an emotionally-unstable minor child, lest they be at “risk for suicide”.

5.  Kids all across the country suddenly became safe on the toilet, and when changing clothes to get exercise.

6.  Parents have had countless opportunities to personally teach their children how to conduct life:  bake bread, cook a meal, fix broken things instead of throwing them away,  budget scarce funds, care for a pet, sew a mask for the hospital helpers.

7.  The price of gasoline went down for the foreseeable future.

8.  Smog magically lifted from some of our cities.

9.  Many of us received auto insurance refunds.

10.   Jobless people got free food because farmers would otherwise been forced to waste their production.

11.   Many churches are reporting greater attendance at online, streamed services than they ever had in the megachurch building.

12.  Megachurches, meanwhile, have become unworkable for the foreseeable future, and have devolved into the much more scriptural  and less anonymous house churches.

13.  An icon of yesteryear culture is making a glorious comeback: the drive-in movie!

14.  Schoolchildren everywhere (and their parents) are now immersed in the workings of U.S. Constitution.

15.  Little girls and little boys are having the opportunity to see scientists in action as role models, and coming off as national heroes.  Who will this inspire one day?

16. Little girls and little boys are getting a refreshing pause from athletes and Hollywood celebrities as role models.

17.  We are all being reminded of the U.S.A.’s  founding principles, and what all it took to win them,  on a daily basis.

18. We are being treated to group worship videos from all over the world to lift our spirits.

19.  The animal shelters magically emptied of previously unadopted pets who found homes at last.

20.  County sheriffs gave us all a civics lesson in the letters they sent out stating that their oath of office to uphold the Constitution precluded them from enforcing “emergency order” fines and jail penalties for “crimes” their respective legislatures have not so designated.

21.  Millions of Gen-Z’ers dreaming of a socialist Utopia got an unpleasant taste of socialism in action, as empty store shelves shocked them back to reality.

22.  Meanwhile, these same Gen-Z’ers will benefit from a moratorium on the importation of low wage foreign workers who have for years been permitted to usurp their jobs and futures.

23.  Dozens of great doctors and scientists became emboldened to speak out against the Federal public health agencies who have become part of “the swamp” in the last 3 or 4 decades, raising the hope that America (and other countries) might emerge physically healthier for the future.

24.  A few states and countries did their CCP virus response without violating our Constitution, and because they did, we have objective data on how we can handle it better next time.

25.  More people are clued into end times prophecy, and watching for the promised return of Jesus.

To be sure, there are some real “bummers” out there, as well:  isolated grandparents and great grandparents, destroyed businesses, lost lives and lost privacy, the threat of compulsory vaccinations and digital tracking, food shortages,  dangerous criminals being released from prisons,  law-abiding business owners taking their place in the lockups, stress levels abounding, domestic abuse (including child abuse) in lockup, growing incivility in discourse about the situation, social media censoring, and on and on.  The national debt burden that our children and grandchildren will have to contend with is tragic and disappointing to those of us who so wanted to bequeath them a better future.   Another star-studded National Day of Prayer has come and gone without any signs of the necessary movement toward national repentance in the churches of the United States.    Yet, we have received blessings from God we don’t come anywhere near deserving.

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
 Who can speak of the mighty deeds of the Lord,
Or can show forth all His praise?
How blessed are those who keep justice,
Who practice righteousness at all times!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

 

citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Is Satan Running Out the Clock on Reforming “No-Fault” Laws?

2 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,  and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.   Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.   Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left.”

So far during the pandemic and unconstitutional lockdown response, “standerinfamilycourt” has focused on completing a couple of stalled blog posts on other topics started earlier, while observing, praying and reflecting, knowing this one is going to be difficult to write, and impossible, really, without the Holy Spirit being the guest author.    How much more time do we have, if any, for the life work of removing the jackboot of “family court” from the necks of our nation’s covenant families?

As this post is being written,

– a few U.S. states are coming out of lockdown

– protests are robust in most of the U.S. states that are not easing their house arrest orders, and are running out of factual excuses

– thousands of dangerous violent and sexual offenders are being released from jails and prisons against the wishes of most citizens

– the jail space thereby freed up is being used to jail citizens who violate gubernatorial “emergency” regulations to exercise their fundamental rights to attend church services in their cars in the parking lots of their churches, along with mothers who dare take their child to the local park, or perform personal services in order to feed their children.

– evidence is emerging U.S. “deep state” actors in various Federal health watchdog agencies broke laws to assist the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with bio-espionage plans, even financing the effort with nearly $4 million of U.S. taxpayer money after the necessary lab research was halted and banned in the U.S., and (get this) government officials and influential corporate figures personally holding several related patents!

– Chinese-made surveillance drones hover over the skies of our leftist-run cities, such as Elizabeth, NJ

– $3 trillion has been added to the already-staggering national debt, amounting to about half of the expected additional outlays for the year 2020

– 30 million people have lost their jobs as a result of the media-fanned panic, driving unemployment figures upward from 2% to 20% in the span of six weeks time

– a strong push is being orchestrated worldwide to make a yet-to-be developed, test  or approved vaccine, preferably containing a “digital certificate” to contain overall immunization status, compulsory for all citizens by the end of 2020.

– evangelicals across the U.S. are getting into spirited online debates with one another about whether the Rapture will occur before the Great Tribulation begins, or at some point thereafter…

As if all this were not enough, significant credible evidence has also steadily emerged from various sources that a consortium of wealthy global elites, Big Technology interests, Big Pharmacy interests, Big Media, Communist Chinese leadership, and U.S. government agency insiders have been engineering this “pandemic” for the past few years in a centrally-orchestrated plan to remove our Constitution and our nationalist President by deliberately crashing our economy and keeping it artificially crashed until the upcoming Presidential election in November.    Here’s how one fairly well-informed Pastor Jones Northlake Baptist Church – Georgia described the plot and its timeline to his “virtual” congregation on a recent Sunday morning, in a 30 minute sermon with closing prayer.

Meanwhile, many state legislatures are out of session for the foreseeable future, and some court proceedings are being conducted via web-conferencing tools.   With “expert” predictions that the virus will return by next winter, who knows when these forums will be back to their normal operations?     Was it really just 12 months ago that Texas HB922 was under testimony in committee in the Texas House?   That day was full of obnoxious and unnecessary distractions, including a parade of gender-disordered individuals moaning about the perceived threats to their right to “marry” that a competing bill posed.   Yet those distractions seem to pale in comparison to the current lengthy, ongoing distraction from reform efforts.

Depending on the outcome of the November election, one of two unpleasant but likely scenarios threaten to further jolt the country.    On the one hand, if President Trump is re-elected, this aforementioned globalist consortium can be counted on to redouble and intensify  their efforts at espionage,  inducing treason and sabotage, possibly even triggering a multinational war, if necessary to accomplish their aims of restoring momentum to Marxist globalism.  It shouldn’t be too surprising to see one of their current leaders revealed as the Antichrist of the book of Revelation.   The pressures on families and individuals to merely survive will become as all-consuming as the last several weeks have proven to be, until and unless Trump can get the upper hand somehow.

On the other hand, if one or more of several boasted-of leftist schemes succeed in interfering with the electoral college or with the popular vote, to the advantage of Trump’s Democratic challenger, the plans to unravel our Bill of Rights will likely trigger a civil war with the constitutionalists.    John Zmirak put it this way in an April 24 article in The Stream:

“But today’s Democrats realized what 1860s Democrats didn’t. Open secession backfires. Especially when most of the private firearms in the country, and sympathies of the military, are with your opponents….

“They [ the Left ] sent a message, which they’re still sending now, with the extra force of the lockdown:

“We’re absolutely ruthless in our grasp at power. We’re willing to lie, hurt the country, slander the innocent as traitors, rapists or racists, and call our opponents murderers for disagreeing with us. You Christians and conservatives won’t go that far. So you will lose. You might as well make things easier on yourself and America, and admit it.”

Based on what’s been happening all over the country with the lockdown protests, “standerinfamilycourt” believes the Left seriously miscalculated what our constitutionalist patriots would do if the tables of circumstance were turned from 2016’s gracious outcome.   Videos like this one (SIFC full disclaimer here) have been cropping up lately with the cold calculus for a successful constitutional rescue and recovery operation.    Wars and rumors of wars….

Perhaps either scenario will lead to the kind of revival and repentance that will save our culture and way of life, and eventually result in peeling back all the anti-family legislation of the past 50 years as a result of the community-wide lesson-learned about our inescapable need for durable, traditional families as a matter of national security.   Or, perhaps this will be the beginning of the end for our 244-year grand experiment in maintaining history’s longest-running constitutional republic.

Yet… what if hundreds or thousands of the saints in the marriage permanence movement all disappeared on the same day, the ones now standing in loving chastity for restoration of their original covenant family,  as well as the ones with restored or never-threatened intact covenant marriages, leaving behind only their comrades in the movement who entered into “remarriages” while still having a living, estranged spouse, or the ones who don’t actually mind being “divorced”, but merely want 50% custody of their children and a break on their child support bill?   Some of us will be eternally relieved of our heavy cultural and legal reform burden on that day, while others of us will remain to find the movement ranks slightly thinned of those they consider “moralistic” Christians.     It could happen just before administration of the new chipped vaccine for the CCP virus becomes mandatory nationwide,  or this event might even become the final test that God uses to separate the sheep from the goats before whisking away His bride…and control of the government  of the United States becomes an irrelevance overnight, yielding to the One-World government the globally powerful instigators of this virus aspire to.   At that point, so will reform of “family laws” also become an irrelevance.   At that point, the wait will only be seven apocalyptic years before the government of Jesus Christ re-establishes the family law of Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:6 for the next 1,000 years.   In light of this, perhaps each covenant stander has time for little else now except pleading for the urgent redemption in Christ of the eternal souls of their friends and family members.

It’s not over until it’s over, so SIFC will carry on as the Lord instructs and enables, in the meantime.   We live in breathlessly exciting times, but we need to keep focused on the fact that those who follow Jesus know from the writings of the apostle John exactly how this story ends.    The next planned blog post will be about all the unexpected blessings from the “plandemic” world crisis, so stay tuned.

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise,  making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
– Ephesians 5:15-17

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

How Do I Know Whether God Joined My First Marriage?

13 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

Adam and Eve…Ahab and Jezebel….Joseph and Asenath…Moses and Zipporah….Herod and the daughter of the King of Petra….Herodias and Philip….Timothy’s mother, Lois and his pagan father…Potiphar and Mrs. P….Pontius Pilate and Mrs. Pilate…Felix and Drusilla  

What do all of these biblical married couples have in common?    Obviously, they stand as the scriptural rebuke to contemporary evangelical fantasies (usually arrived at in retrospect) that, “God didn’t join my first marriage.”

It isn’t usually that the evangelical church leadership pushes this nonsense.   No, Protestant leadership seems to prefer the equally immoral falsehood that some human act (X) “breaks” the covenant, and “marrying” another person constitutes a new covenant as binding as the first.     The only church that officially promotes the myth that God “doesn’t join” some original marriages, where there is a believer and an unbeliever making vows, seems to be the Roman Catholic Church, which presumes to issue “annulment” papers in that instance, but only upon the request of one of the spouses.

When the Pharisees (presumably all unbelievers, with possibly one or two exceptions) challenged Jesus’ first declaration from the sermon on the mount that God-joined holy matrimony was dissoluble only by physical death, He took these leaders on a history tour back to the Garden of Eden and recreated for them the first-ever wedding performed by the hand of God.   He described how Eve was taken out of Adam, who declared his wife to be “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”.     The Apostle Paul later echoes this in Ephesians 5:

“So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

But, I digress….forthwith, back to that wedding scene in Genesis 2.    Moses tells us of the Father’s presence as officiant.   He tells us that the generations coming from Adam and Eve will be never-married, leaving their father and mother to be made one-flesh (sarx mia, in the Greek) with the spouse of their youth.   We see consent, and we see two witnesses, Jesus and the serpent.    What we do not see is any religious test applied by God or anyone else.    History tells us that religious tests which retroactively “nullify” a marriage didn’t arrive until the 13th century.

Jesus had every opportunity to tell the religious-but-apostate philandering Pharisees that God couldn’t possibly have joined their original marriages, but instead He told them this:

 “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate [put distance between]….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her;  and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

The only fact that can reasonably be supported by scripture is that God joins all marriages between a never-married or widowed man and a never-married or widowed woman, of every tribe, tongue and nation where there is consent and intent to form a home together.   No exceptions.    The direct corollary is that God does not join civil-only legalized unions where there is an estranged prior spouse still living, regardless of the individual circumstances.   For a deeper understanding of this, please read “GOD’S CHARACTER AND HIS COVENANTS”.   

God actually didn’t join your first marriage if you tried to wed someone who was legally estranged from a living spouse.    Otherwise, nothing they did, or you feel changes the fact that He was  there and was the real officiant.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
– Hebrews 13:4

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

citizenship, Discipleship, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

On Deeming Our Churches “Non-Essential”: A (Hopefully) Balanced Application of Religious Liberty Principles

by “standerinfamilycourt”

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.   Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.   Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake;  for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.   If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.   But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake;  I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?

Why in the world do we have monitored stay-home orders, with fines and jail time attached these days?    What in the world happened to our freedom of association, much less our free religious exercise?   Is it not due to the political climate in which a vast majority of the citizens of the United States of America (or the UK,  Australia or most any other stricken nation) instinctively know they are not ready to meet their Maker, and are (justifiably) terrified of suddenly dying?    Is it not also partly due to the same sentiment in the hearts of most of our state and Federal policy-makers?   In the UK, there are even reports of surveillance drones, and of officials defacing public park spaces  as tactics to keep people inside and at home.

Not surprisingly, when pastors start getting arrested and jailed in the U.S. for holding physical instead of virtual church on Sunday, we’re finding it triggers two different kinds of outrage, even among evangelicals.   Disgruntled Camp 1 points in knee-jerk fashion to the First Amendment, to the commandment not to forsake the gathering of the saints,  Paul’s instruction to observe corporate communion, and the imperative of anointing the sick with oil and laying on of hands.

Says Matt Walsh: “Pastor Howard-Browne insists that his church took many precautions. Hand sanitizer was given out. Staff wore gloves. Congregants were spaced out as much as possible. They may not have all been 6 feet apart, but they were certainly better spaced than you will be if you wait in line at the grocery store.”  

(Debatable – seems a bit hard to visualize non-contagious spacing in a teeming megachurch, as shown in the video that triggered the arrest.)

Camp 2 points to public witness, and the commandment not to presumptuously put the Lord to the test.

Says Christian religious freedom attorney, David French:

“There exists within Christianity a temptation to performative acts that masquerade as fearlessness. In reality, this recklessness represents—as the early church father John Chrysostom called it—“display and vainglory.” Look how fearless we are, we declare, as we court risks that rational people should shun. In the context of a global pandemic followers of Christ can actually become a danger to their fellow citizens, rather than a source of help and hope.

“Or, put another way, reckless Christians can transform themselves from angels of mercy to angels of death, and the rest of the world would be right to fear their presence.”

Both evangelical camps make good points.    The environment for hostility against Christians was already fairly toxic on a purely ideological basis well before people started testing positive for COVID-19, and it’s not such a stretch to imagine that temporary emergency measures might one day morph into permanent shutdowns, if certain voices in the debate got their way.    In fact, the Mayor of New York City just this past week threatened a synagogue with permanent closure for holding services, as if he truly believed he had the constitutional authority to do so.

On the other hand, the Lord has not spared His (purported) flock from infection in shocking numbers, and from possible death, as a direct result of disobeying local authorities to gather, as noted by Mr. French’s account of events in his own state of Tennessee.   Similar reports came out of an Assembly of God church in  Arkansas and a Presbyterian church in Washington State in the past two weeks.

Regular readers of this blog know that the Assemblies of God has official doctrine that (contrary to clear scripture) permits pastors to occupy the pulpit who are in “marriages” Jesus called ongoing adultery.   In a sudden 1973 reversal of biblical doctrine on marriage that had been in place since the denomination’s inception, it became “compassionate” to descrate the sanctuary of the Lord with such “weddings”.    The same can be said of the Presbyterian church, not only with regard to remarriage adultery which is ensconced in its founding doctrine, but more recently with regard to sodomous “weddings”.    The Lord God’s hand joins neither.

Jesus had a pointed promise, not at all inconsistent with what has actually occurred, of what these practices would yield in the last days:

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:

The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:

‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.”

Meanwhile, an article in the New York Times pointed the finger at evangelicals, shrilly accusing Christians of responsibility for spreading the disease by a “hostility to science”.    If evangelicals have done so, they’ve done so spiritually, far more so than physically, as God’s wrath falls on an immoral nation from which the mainstream church has grown almost indistinguishable.  Far from contributing to physical spread of coronavirus, most churches now sit empty on weekends, while worship teams play to a livestream camera, and the pastor’s sermon is broadcast to the flock.   Tithing is by text.

Listen to what the Holy Spirit says in Psalm 91, a passage which reverberated this past week across social media:

“You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
 Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.
A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.
 You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.
 For you have made the Lord, my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.
 No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.”

This is a very important conditional promise, simply because it is not possible to dwell with a sodomy or adultery partner (not even given the tallest stack of legal paper) and with the Holy Lord at the same time.   He stands as a witness, He declares to the “divorced” and “remarried” priest, with the covenant spouse of our youth.   Spare Him the excuses.   He knows who He has personally joined to whom.

And what of the church founded by Rodney Howard-Browne, the jailed Florida pastor?    He might not have a case under the Federal constitution for a couple of important reasons:

(1) The national RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) doesn’t cover his situation

(2) It wasn’t “Congress” who enacted the temporary orders that are infringing on the congregation’s right to gather.

Objectively speaking, the state does seem to have a compelling state interest in suspending large public gatherings to curb the spread of a highly communicable pandemic-level killing disease, and could probably succeed in proving that the temporary stay-home order is the least intrusive means of achieving that objective.   Florida is one of the states that has adopted their own RFRA.

All that said, Pastor Browne probably has a better case under the Florida constitution religious freedom clause, because it does not mention a legislature’s involvement.   It simply says..”there shall be no law prohibiting or penalizing…” 

The Florida constitution reads:

“SECTION 3. Religious freedom.—There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

Constitutional attorney David French is likely factoring elements of the legal case into the arguments in his article.    At the same time, it appears that Browne was quite deliberate in challenging the local order, as evidenced by the legal opinion posted to the church web page.

The following is a 1993-ish quote from our 42nd POTUS, courtesy of the Alliance Defending Freedom during Indiana’s 2015 RFRA fight with Amazon and the LGBT special interests:

Lord knows that the state imperative to safeguard the public from  hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more deaths by a quick-killing, highly contagious infectious plague should be an obvious compelling state interest.   Ditto for the mass unemployment that has resulted overnight – reported in the U.S. this morning as 6 million new unemployment claims – forty times the usual pace.  Under RFRA language, the key is whether a temporary restriction on large gatherings (especially of megachurch proportions) is “narrowly-tailored”, or the least burdening approach available to achieve that compelling public health interest.    On a short term basis, it seems the case can reasonably be made, especially where there’s hard evidence in an individual case  that the church was not even following safe distancing mandates, as evidenced in the March 29 video (if  you click there, don’t forget to come back and finish reading this–the worship, though crowded, is pretty awesome over there) of the River Church Tampa worship service that was livestreamed, and which led to the pastor’s arrest this week.

The head of one of the Christian legal defense funds (all five or six of which routinely refuse to defend an authentic believer’s religious free exercise right to not have their marriage forcibly “dissolved”) says he will be filing a suit this week or next in defense of the arrested pastor, currently released on bond.   The final thing to say about this Florida case is that it appears from a legal opinion, pre-posted the week before  on the church website, this pastor intended to be arrested, or at the very least, to lead a high-profile challenge against the stay-home orders, and this was evidently more of a priority than the lives and souls of the unredeemed passing through the church doors.
(In a very positive post-arrest development later in the week, the governor of Florida issued an order deeming church activities “essential”, as did several other governors this week.)

Contrast how a Texas pastor of a small marriage-permanence church felt led to handle the issue in the days before the governor of his state also exempted churches from being deemed a “non-essential” establishment.    Brother Sparks also feels strongly that churches have a biblical mandate to gather and meet, fearing God rather than men, but probably without the ulterior motives.   Churches that don’t do adulterous weddings, don’t take (non-widowed) “blended families” into ongoing fellowship, and regularly preach on Luke 16:18 don’t tend to become crowded, wealthy megachurches.   Neither do the saints in that small body tend to live in ongoing heterosexual sin, be it fornication or papered-over adultery.    His tiny congregation is meeting outside in the open air, while following the spacing guidelines of Caesar, honoring both God and Caesar.   They won’t be endangering and cutting short the life of a potential visitor to their service who is yet-unredeemed by faith.

Given that there have been recent arrests in the U.S. of people who were engaged by the Chinese government in bio-espionage activities, and given the Bill Gates role in the overall picture, and finally, given the emerging connection of viruses with implementing the 5G network in Asia, Europe, and major metropolitan areas in the U.S., based on reports leaking out from disaffected industry employees, the wise citizen will consider the distinct possibility that “this too” might not pass back to anything we would consider normalcy.    Restrictions on medium or large gatherings due to waves of plagues might become a thing on an ongoing basis.   Like the cartoon figure, Simon-bar-Sinister, too many out there want to rule the world, and it’s always been a certainty that satan does.   Keep an eye on the success or failure of those anti-body studies we’ve been hearing about, and whether or not our government chooses to reinstate tough espionage consequences that have been relaxed in recent decades.

Someone who has had their religious liberty violated in a profound. life-altering and lasting way, might be well-placed to see this debate over church gatherings in its proper longterm perspective.   The number one motive behind all of it begins and ends with godly concern for eternal souls, or the lack thereof.    If souls are the main concern, pastors don’t let the lambs in the flock die in remarriage adultery which will cost them their eternity, hence congregations don’t grow to a size where the gathering becomes a bad witness to the pagans who live in terror of being exposed to a proven killer.    If souls are the main concern, pastors will go out of their way to make sure the earthly body of a lost pagan soul does not become virulently infected as a direct or indirect consequence of his church’s activities.   The key thing to watch for in the coming weeks and months is how timely and equitably the restrictions on churches are lifted (at least temporarily) in the receding wake of the worst, not whether restrictions are temporarily imposed on churches in various locales.  That timely lifting of restrictions is what should be fiercely fought for based on the First Amendment provisions.

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!  

Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Are Christians Engaging in “No-Fault” Repeal Activism Sinning?

1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

 “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
– John 18:36

It is not unusual to encounter Christians who are  uncomfortable engaging in secular political activity of any type, even when a nation’s constitution is being existentially threatened, its children confiscated from fit parents and trafficked to abusers for the Federal money that changes hands with the state;  others of its children being legally murdered on the delivery table;  its elderly legally euthanized or starved in their bedridden state, and many other abuses of the human dignity of His image-bearers equally-horrific as these.

The more gentle-spirited of these cite teachers such as David Bercot, who argue the writings of the Early Church Fathers as evidence that Christ-followers must not presume to engage politically (especially ~ 26 minutes).

But there’s another camp.   More recently, these reservations of conscience have gone beyond reticent discomfort, to something resembling a more “pious” way to say “STFU“.     One young  know-it-all, whose tastes seem to run more to the social justice “gospel”, recently scolded “standerinfamilycourt” on our facebook page Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, as follows:

“Also, I have noticed this trend going around that i call, “tough guy preachers” where Christians are acting harshly with people who disagree with them. I have noticed that there is a common denominator with this trend- it is the Christians who have involved themselves politically to a great degree and are passionate about king Saul… I mean Trump.

“Since you all hold to the historic Christian view of divorce and remarraige (sic), I would have all of you know that the early Christians had nothing to do with politics- in fact, they flat out refused to participate in them, the military, the government, or any institution that required their participation on the systematic disobedience to Christ’s commands.

Jesus said not to turn away those who would borrow, and will send people to hell for the sin of omission when it comes to caring for those in need.

Will Jesus say to you, “depart from me” for you voting His widows and orphans out of the country?

Maybe, just maybe this divorce and remarraige (sic) issue should be secondary for you people.”

Spoken like a young man who obviously hasn’t personally experienced much extreme harshness in life, and isn’t going to be persuaded by any amount of rightly-divided biblical arguments that actual souls are on the line (too tough-guy preacherish, right?)   This fellow makes the ridiculous presumption that those who politically support national border sovereignty, and who reject the Marxist “social gospel” as the false gospel that it is, must neglect the poor in the local and world communities.   Since he lacks any actual evidence for levelling this broad-brush charge, he uses his ideology as the defacto “evidence” thereof.   Certain things, according to scripture are indeed heaven-or-hell matters, regardless of how “fruitful” or “charitable” they look on the exterior…therefore, basic morality in the nation’s “family laws” eternally matter to at least an equal extent as the material compassion Jesus spoke of, and neither should be neglected.

As for “tough guy preachers”,  what would this pious scolder call Jesus Christ?   Or John the Baptist?   What would he call the Apostle Paul?   For that matter, what would this young man say to someone like Rachel Held Evans or Jim Wallis (who recently led a “prayer initiative” to reverse the 2016 Presidential election results)?    Apparently, Marxism in the name of Jesus is a “higher virtue” – to some,  at least – than forms of political engagement which stress personal morality and collective responsibility.    This fellow is quite typical of the clear majority of his generation, but thankfully not all of them….

Many Americans Just Don’t Know . . . While Others Must Have Forgotten

On the other side of the coin, it’s also thankfully welcome to see a committed Christ follower leading people, in the name of Jesus, to our state capitals to demand the repeal of laws that sanction utter and contemptuous disrespect for the sanctity of  life and marriage.    Who’s right here?   Whose position is godly in reality?

History has plenty of Christian activists the Lord has used to accomplish God-sized human suffering relief projects, even when some of them were not morally perfect, and quite often when some came very close to being so.    Aside from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was engaged in attempting to rid Germany of the Nazis, we also think of William Wilberforce,  of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the days before he became a sodomous, philandering hypocrite whose underlying character couldn’t handle the fame),  of founding document signers like Daniel Webster, and of the many faithful disciples today who lead family policy councils or Christian legal defense ministries across the country.   We think of believers serving in Congress or the state house.    We think of believers who defied civil law to operate the Underground Railroad, freeing escaping slaves in the 19th century – an operation that involved many pastors.  Some saints have been martyred for their efforts to bring legal reform to immoral governments – can we then say they brought martyrdom on themselves due to disobedience in getting “entangled in the affairs of life” or did Paul have some other context in mind for his admonition?   Is it wrong for a Christ-follower to make a living from political activism or from government service?

There are several factors that make contemporary believers uncomfortable with Christian political activism, among them:

(1) The church is often complicit in supporting moral evils
The reasons behind an ongoing 60-year history of church impotence against the Sexual Revolution are myriad.   They range from the humanist origins of the mainline Protestant denominations and the fear of man, to the indirect mega-profit from the continuation of the legalized abomination in question.    Nothing new here:  Wilberforce had to contend with a corrupt, complicit church as well, and so did Bonhoeffer, sadly.  

(2) failure to understand the spiritual warfare involved  
Many Christians are unaware of opposition in the spiritual realm, or are unschooled in it, or are simply unwilling to take it on.    They don’t want to maintain the moral purity or rigorous spiritual discipline necessary to engage on that level and be that channel for the Lord’s power.

(3) heightened risk of idolatry and wrong motives
Speaking of spiritual warfare, if we don’t do regular health-checks on our egos and motives, and fail to guard our hearts, this target we’ve painted on our own backs by engaging the kingdom of darkness are never out of satan’s sight.    Those who do engage must constantly readjust, to maintain total dependency on the power of God, focus on the glory of God, and stay plugged into the Power Source.    That’s hard work!   We must often do so in an atmosphere of undeserved criticism and slander that’s devil-commissioned.   On top of all that, we must maintain balanced family commitments and relationships, so that our project doesn’t morph into our idol as the going gets progressively tough, and discouragements come.

(4) resource-intensiveness (time, treasure, talent)
Even Jesus counseled not to start building a tower without first counting the cost and making sure we have the resources to complete it.    He pointed out the ridicule that might come from not being able to complete it, but there’s even damage to the cause itself possible, from not reasonably sizing up what it’s going to take, and asking the Lord to meet any shortfalls before starting.

(5) interference with family relationships
Touched on earlier, the thought continues that our number one priority is the souls of our progeny and spouse.    None of us possesses the resources to clean up the world, while fulfilling our kingdom obligations to those we only get one shot at bringing up, or bringing along.     We must rely on the Lord to bridge the gap, while being as responsible as we can humanly be.   Everyone knows of missionary kids who grew up apostate or delinquent, and so do the many opponents of our kingdom calling outside the home.

(6) possible neglect of the basic gospel work
Face it, as evidenced above, we’re going to get accused by satan of this one anyway if there’s any form of sexual ethics at stake.     None of us wants the “neglect” charge to be rendered true in the course of our mission.   It really needn’t be.    Testimony to the gospel is as much of a function of how we walk before pagans and weaker Christians as we go about our task, as it is of anything we say or hand out in the form of tracts.   Some causes, if creditably walked out, are the gospel in action, especially projects involving the sanctity and integrity of marriage which is itself a prominent symbol of the gospel.

(7) political success may not yield imperishable results 
(1 Cor. 3:12-16)    And it may necessarily yield any results so in our lifetime.   Will this political cause merely increase our comfort levels while living in this present world, or will it snatch souls from the hell-flames?   Will it perhaps help stay the hand of God’s judgment on a nation?

“If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

What sorts of outcomes or prizes can be expected to survive the fire spoken of here?     Of Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer and King, whose political achievements do you think survived that testing fire?

Notice that the following scripture does not say, “you will go to hell unless you mind your own business and go about your own work”.    It says to make it our goal to do so.   Occasionally in the course of history there arise factors whereby leading this quiet life minding our own business entails looking the other way while true evil is inflicted on our helpless neighbor.

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. and to aspire to live quietly, to attend to your own matters, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.–  1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

This is certainly not the first article ever written asking this question, but “standerinfamilycourt” has a pointed reason for bringing the matter back up now: we need more success engaging pastor support at the state level in the repeal of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, as courageous legislators in various states sponsor worthy reform bills that might not otherwise have a chance of being enacted.   So far, these legislators have not had the clergy support they deserve for this cause.    We would like to improve the pastor engagement levels, without which ultimate success at meaningfully reforming “family laws” seems remote.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Applying Gender To Scripture As it Suits Us: A “New” Eisegesis

by Standerinfamilycourt

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity against God?   –  James 4:4

Occasionally, “standerinfamilycourt” is forced to ban someone from our pages who is a persistent troll, who vehemently disagrees with our message, and who has as little respect for the purposeful decorum and mission of Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional and this blog page as they have respect for God’s word, rightly divided.    When such a person is an unchurched heathen or self-professed atheist, it’s sad enough, but when it’s someone steeped in contemporary “churchianity” who is in dire circumstances, and has been through the typical rough times that everyone who has suffered the larceny and indignity of being betrayed and involuntarily divorced has suffered, it’s downright heartbreaking.     However, from the beginnings back in 2014, the planning for these pages involved a strict “troll policy”, knowing that our message…

(1) would be tremendously unpopular with pew-sitter and pagan alike, and

(2) nevertheless, still needed the dignity to reach and persuade powerful people in the church, media, and government with scriptural truth which has not been manipulated by rogue bible publishers for well over 100 years.

Our pages were deliberately not set up as group forums, and consequently are not the place to debate theology.    There are hundreds of other places to do that.    Our page has the deliberately-planned mission and purpose which will not “morph” for as long as it takes to accomplish that mission and purpose, or to silence us altogether.     We do our very best to put the rightly-divided word of God out there as it appears in the original manuscript texts, after rigorously applying a full range of sound hermeneutical principles, as all worthy books by others on this topic do, and as all heretical books on this topic deliberately omit.     That’s the way it’s always been on our pages, and we bend for no one who can’t present solid proof according to hermeneutical principles and original texts that we’re materially wrong.    So far in a little over five years, no one has done so.   Instead, the usual challenge is thick with ad hominem,  and appeals to what hireling celebrity pastors have to say.

A recently-banned individual is physically suffering from a debilitating degenerative disease, whose covenant wife abandoned him because of it, and divorced him to adulterously “marry” another. This man is an extreme example of what compromised church leadership often leaves pages like ours contending with.    He works at Walmart and became a drain on the household income and self-indulgent lifestyle that many in our culture feel entitled to.   Having  been cruelly abandoned for greener pastures, he now desires to “marry” a female caretaker and feels there surely is an “exception” to Christ’s “unreasonable” moral code for people like him.    When he failed to secure “standerinfamilycourt’s” assent for this based on circumstances and a “God” who would never be that “unfair”, he next set his jaw on arguing his legalistic interpretation of Christ’s remarriage prohibition by strict application of gender, which he presumes provides him his “out”.    Obviously, he could go to almost any hireling pastor and get a hearty pat on the back for both his theory and his “plan”, most likely dubbing it as “God’s ‘provision”.      SIFC, however, told him in no uncertain terms he would lose his soul  if he indulges this plan of his, and that he needed to take counsel that he was no bible scholar.     This led to public charges of “arrogance” and “judging” directed at us, and he was issued the standard “troll warning”.

Having no appetite to invest time and posting space in a balanced, hermeneutical debate on rightly-dividing Matt. 7: 1-3, he was cut off when he ignored the troll warning.    People who follow our pages regularly get a balanced view on the topic of “judging” people inside and outside the church, as well as a chance to frequently observe the cultural havoc that antinomianism has wreaked in the church ever since the Reformation.

Standing firm for biblical moral absolutes in a wicked, selfish evangelical culture absolutely guarantees the perception of “arrogance” on SIFC’s part.  Long have we been accused by so-called “Christians” of “driving” people (potential converts, they mean) away.   These people who say this are shameless emotional bullies, and SIFC will not be shamed (or bullied) in the name of Jesus.    Long have we been accused of having no empathy or “compassion” for people’s human weaknesses, even after we point out that, according to scripture, this life is a “mist or vapor” and that eternity is forever.    As this individual vigorously attempted to do, we are regularly accused of personally “condemning people to hell” – a superpower we repeatedly assure people God did not grant us.     Pointing to the fact that Jesus’ words in Luke 16:18-31 also “condemned people to hell” who pursued non-widowed remarriage (and their “best life now”) did no good whatsoever.    In their mind, the Sovereign Creator of heaven and earth has no righteous authority to set moral absolutes for the building of holy character, nor for the good of society as a whole.   All humanists believe this, which is why humanism is always completely incompatible with true discipleship.   Speaking of hell, this person tellingly  likened obeying Christ in this area of sexual ethics to being “condemned” to living the rest of his natural life “in hell”, completely oblivious to the volumes that such an attitude speaks of the person’s actual relationship with Jesus, who apparently isn’t enough for him.   Another male commenter on our page (bless him!) attempted in vain to point out this latter observation to the wounded gentleman — who had repeatedly pressed the same lines of argument on other recent posts without violating the troll policy.

So, what is this gender-based eisegesis, and has it been contagious?  In a certain sense, it’s not really that new.    The Judaizers who try to justify and promote both consecutive and concurrent polygamy have a very similar legalistic argument, actually — and not too coincidentally, they are typically professing Christian men who have been badly burnt by a faultless unilateral divorce they got no say in (join the club, gentlemen).   Their pores absolutely ooze resentment while they claim to have “forgiven” their “ex” wives like the Good Book tells us to.    In this particular manifestation, our now-banned outraged troll posited the following (after previously exhausting several other arguments on other threads that were just as silly and unfounded)….

“my ‘ex’ divorced me, I didn’t divorce her.    In Matthew, it doesn’t talk about the wife divorcing her husband.   It says only if the husband divorces his wife and marries another woman is anybody committing adultery.   I’m not marrying a divorced woman and I didn’t do the divorcing, so how can I be guilty of adultery if I remarry?   If you’re going to throw out one thing Jesus said, you might as well throw all of it out.”

Besides an allegedly “selective” hermeneutic, SIFC was literally accused by this chap of having a log in the eye, but the irony of the above statement is rich, is it not?     Our determined critic doesn’t mind throwing out every bit of what Jesus (more importantly and centrally) said in Matthew 19:6,8 about man’s divorce not only being immoral, but also metaphysically impossible.    Our amorous friend was determined to hyperfocus on the what, because he didn’t dare attend to the why of what Jesus actually made an undeniably consistent pattern of saying, in elaboration to His indissolubility proclamation.    Grab a snatch of God’s word a la carte and completely ignore all context involved.   Ignore also what all of the apostles and earliest church fathers unanimously echoed in their writings.      Not very originally, our troll friend threw nearly every conventional argument out there that all determined remarriage adulterers invariably do (not “the unpardonable sin”, Jesus “allowed” divorce and remarriage for “sexual immorality”,  etc. etc.), before tossing this one last salvo out there.    If there was a touch of originality to this final argument of his, it was in the transparent feeble-mindedness of it, so we hope it doesn’t sprout legs and journey destructively through the marriage permanence community the way several other feeble-minded heresies have nevertheless done.

Moses did indeed deliver his regulations in a gender-specific fashion, but that doesn’t mean Jesus also did, even if one of His scribes chose a writing style that spoke to a patriarchally-oriented Hebrew culture to whom he was recounting the same incident as Mark related to a Gentile audience that included both sexes equally.  Jesus issued the most famous sermon in history in order to abrogate most of the sayings of Moses with a higher moral law than “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth”…. “it is written….but I say unto you….MOSES allowed…but I say unto you….”  

Another of Jesus’ scribes and one of his apostles both took pains to point out where the resurrection of Christ deliberately put men and women on equal footing when it comes to obeying Him from an authentic and sincerely grateful place in our hearts, not merely following a mechanical legality to the letter while finding a loophole for the unpalatable core principle involved.    “If I can’t get out of responsibility for my marriage even when my wife is unfaithful”, the disciples reasoned, “it’s better never to marry at all…”    As we see in scripture, several of them later changed their accustomed humanistic bias about this matter, and grew spiritually into teaching the same no-excuses unisex indissolubility that Jesus taught.

 And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
– Mark 10:11-12

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
– Galatians 3:28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Church Discipline, citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Top 10 Excuses “Christians” Give For Living In Papered-Over Adultery

by Standerinfamilycourt

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.   –  James 4:4

August 29 is the traditional date that the martyrdom of Jesus’ older cousin, John the Baptizer, is recognized.    Traditional marriage champions, both Catholic and evangelical (or what few remain of them in either church), rightly point to John for calling Herod and Herodias to physically repent of their adulterous remarriage.    Jesus called John “the greatest of all those born of women”.

Our Catholic friends were particularly eloquent this year about the event where John sacrificed his head to warn two people, and everyone watching, from hell.   Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s brief video-chat focused refreshingly about what scripture suggests was going on in the daughter Salome’s heart, and in her mother Herodias’ heart.   Meanwhile, Bai MacFarlane shared a piece by James Hahn where he makes the point that it is actually normal for sexual immorality to result in all sorts of wanton disregard for human life, in order to get rid of the evidence of guilty sin:  “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin. She wished to continue, for whatever reason, to live in this sin and John the Baptist was a painful reminder day in and day out. So trapped by this sin was she that she forfeited the possibility of gaining even half of the kingdom. Instead, driven by hate and guilt, she chose to hold the head of the Baptist on a platter.”    

As Bai herself prefaced her post: “Separated-faithful spouses are a life-long voiceless reminder that marital abandonment and divorce are wrong. The perpetrators want separated spouses to shut up. On the feast day of John the Baptist, separated-faithful know they are in good company. (from James Hahn: “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin).”

Herod and Herodias, of course, were papered-over adulterers.    What they had done was perfectly legal in the eyes of men.    The only thing is, the universal immorality of what they’d done cannot be papered over in the conscience, even with thick excuses.      Jesus said very plainly, then He and His apostles, along with their disciples,  reiterated many times and ways afterward:

“So they are no longer* two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been* this way. ”   – Matthew 19:6,8

*The verb tense and mood of the original manuscript would more accurately read, “never again” for “no longer”, and would more accurately read “it has not ever been this way from the beginning”.   

John, of course, was serving notice to the king of Judea that his  “paper” expires upon his or her death, after which kingdom of God rules will govern his and her eternity.     In God’s courthouse,  Herod was still married to the daughter of the king of Petra, and Herodias was still married to Phillip.    

In five years of exchanging daily with all kinds of people on this topic, these are the rationalizations that emerge.   Some of them twist scripture and take it out of context to stand Christ’s meaning on its head.    Others are simply man-fabricated (as is the concept of “divorce” itself) out of thin air and antichrist humanism.

So, what are the Top 10 Excuses for living with someone else’s spouse instead of the only person on the face of the earth that God’s hand joined me or you to?

10.  The church says our first marriage(s) were never valid.

9.   My church says my first marriage which took place before I became a Christian doesn’t count.

8.   Deuteronomy 24 says divorce is recognized by God, allowed by Moses, and that I can’t go back to my first spouse.

7.   He / she never became a Christian and left me, so I’m not “bound”.

6.    He / she committed adultery, “breaking” the marriage bond.

5.   If my pastor was willing to do the wedding, it couldn’t be unbiblical.   Divorcing out would be repeat sin.   

4.   He / she was “controlling”.

3.    He / she abused substances.

2.   God wants me to be happy. and wouldn’t make me live the rest of my life without sexual and economic companionship.

1.    He / she was emotionally / physically abusive.

“standerinfamilycourt” does not yet have a ministry with the funds to poll people about such a sensitive topic as justifying the marrying of another person while our original spouse is still living, so the above is purely anecdotal.     Here’s a recent polling view shared by the AARP of the claimed causes of the divorce itself:

According to these statistics, the #1 single driver at 27% (as was the case with Herod and his brother Phillip’s wife, Herodias) is infidelity.  Nebulous cultural excuses like “growing apart” and “incompatibility” combine for another 37%, while domestic violence only comes in at 9% (and probably also includes emotional perceptions of “abuse”).   How blessed it will be one day when God has our society turning around because a good-sized slice of that pie reflects “repentance from a biblically-unlawful union to gain heaven”.

If churches did the job Christ charged them with of making disciples, at the very least, there would be far fewer biblically-unlawful legalized unions occupying their pews.  These post-divorce  “weddings” wouldn’t take place to begin with, and we’d be hearing far fewer excuses, along with a sharply-reduced demand for divorce which is driven (in part) by immoral church acquiescence.  But then, if churches today were doing the job Christ assigned to them, we wouldn’t be living, in the constitutional republic God established at the cost of much shed blood, under profoundly immoral and unconstitutional “family laws”.

He said,

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become lost its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”– Matthew 19:6,8

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

The Apostasy of Joshua Harris: Reversible or No?

1 Comment


by Standerinfamilycourt

“But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.   For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”    – 1 Timothy 6:9-10

Boy, has this event sparked a lively social media war about whether or not Joshua Harris “was ever saved to begin with” between the Arminians and the Calvinists! This kind of conversation is actually healthy and thought-provoking, as long as it stays reasonably civil between brothers, so to speak. That said, don’t be surprised to find both camps at least partially wrong when scripture is looked at objectively, and is compared accurately with the speculations that abound on both sides. This situation is not too unlike the occasion when Jesus rebuked BOTH the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai.

Many Christian periodicals and bloggers have weighed in with their “take” on the apostasy of Joshua Harris (and the faith-questioning  expressed shortly thereafter by Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson).      Aside from the positions taken by observers on the presumed validity of their original regeneration,  much was also said that was worthwhile (and true enough) about following the celebrity culture of modern Christendom with emotions / feelings pre-eminent, rather than a craving pursuit of the word of God.     It was not for nothing that the Apostle Paul said, “imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

Quite amusingly, a slew of divorced and remarried people vigorously applauded Harris on social media for dropping the “legalism” he allegedly reflected in his famous book.  Some publicly confessed cohabiting before marrying their first spouse, but virtuously “waiting” after they divorced that spouse before they entered into their adulterous remarriage with a “Christian”.

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’   But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’   I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
– Luke 18:9-14

(SIFC will leave it to the readers’ imaginations just who was calling whom a “Pharisee” after being informed that according to the rightly-divided word of God, they are still married to their original spouse.)

Since the devil has managed to cause at least one covenant marriage to be severely bruised and violated in these defections, and nothing “standerinfamilycourt”  has reviewed to-date has adequately dealt with the role of the Holy Spirit in a once-regenerated apostate’s life, it was clear there would eventually be a post on these events in
“7 Times Around the Jericho Wall”, but SIFC decided to hang back for a bit, reading up while the others wrang their hands over Harris’ post-announcement fling with the LGBT community.    Harris’ famous book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”  was not familiar, either before or after its renouncement by the author.     A facebook comment expressing hope that his covenant wife would stand and pray for him was met with a derisive response from someone who follows Mrs. Harris on twitter:  she had reportedly been showing her own New Age propensities for quite some time.   (SIFC will need to take the gentleman’s word for it, not personally being on twitter.)

These words of the current pastor of Harris’ former megachurch in a communication to the congregation were insightful…

“Today after I got the news, I read through Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and found it quite grounding. Several times Paul mentions former Christian leaders ‘swerving from’, ‘wandering from’ or ‘making shipwreck of their faith. So while this is sad and confusing, it isn’t new. Christian leaders occasionally veered from faith at the very beginning. Paul said some had gone off-course theologically. Others behaved in ways that violated Christian conscience. For others it was greed. In every case, Paul’s hope was for redemption and restoration.”

1 Timothy 1:18-20
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.

Note, too, that Paul never once claimed any of these particular individuals were false converts. Doing so would essentially deny that the individual involved was indwelt with the Holy Spirit at the time of their regeneration.    The Apostle did not appear prepared to declare such in any of the cases he mentioned. Along with 1 Cor. 5, this makes the 2nd time Paul talks of “handing a believer over to Satan” in hopes their soul will be saved in the end.    An unbeliever doesn’t need “handing over” because Satan already controls them, and it would be cruel to use his kingdom authority do so without the Holy Spirit indwelling them.   I like to counter the toxic Calvinists out there by saying, “once saved, guard your heart!”

Joshua Harris’ online biography states that four years ago he left the pulpit of the megachurch he founded to go back to school and then became a marketing consultant – actually, quite a suitable second career for a megachurch founder!   He then had several years to be influenced by the world on a daily basis, and to develop a love for money, worldly success, corporate culture (and apparently, the ideologies of gender disorder).    Reportedly, his covenant wife followed him on this worldly path.   

“For in the case of those who have once been  enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,  and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance,  since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”
– Hebrews 6:4-6

“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. “
– 1 Corinthians 7:14

Sadly, at this point in time, Joshua Harris does not appear to have a believing wife.    Shannon Harris does not appear currently to have a believing husband.     That doesn’t mean God is not actively pursuing both.     Neither does it mean that either or both of them were “never saved to begin with”.     It is interesting to do a deep-dive into the Greek word translated “unbelieving” in 1 Cor. 7:14, because in a one-flesh, God-joined union, this points to the one-flesh state being a spiritual weapon by which the seed of the woman will crush the head of satan after he has bruised the man’s heel.     The context in 1 Cor. 7 does point to a converted spouse and a spouse who has not been converted, however, the broader meaning ….

*apistos  ἄπιστος  –  literally, “faithless”  or “not faithful because unpersuaded”

[4102 pístis (from 3982/peíthō, “persuade,” “be persuaded”) – properly, persuasion (God giving His persuasion about what pleases Him); faith.   The root of 4102/pístis (“faith”) – 3982/peíthō (“to persuade,” “be persuaded”) – signals the core-meaning of faith in the Bible: “the Lord’s inworked (inbirthed) persuasion” (G. Archer)]

…means that the counsel in verse 7:14 could also apply to once-believing spouses who have declared themselves apostate.   False doctrine and bad influencers can come along later and rob us of our prior conviction.   That sort of event, however, does not and cannot ever remove the indwelling holy spirit, if He indeed indwells.    Notice how close the English word “apostasy” actually is to “apistos”,  but that root word in Greek is actually aphistémi  ἀφίστημι .    Although before Christ, the Holy Spirit came and went but He did not indwell, the Hebrews had a word, shobeb (  שׁוֹבֵב  ) for “backslider”.

If it weren’t for the many empirical restorations of repented prodigal spouses who return home, first to the cross, and then to their one-flesh spouse, and if not for the parable Jesus told of the prodigal son (who was, after all, a child of his father both before and after his sojourn in the Far Country),  Hebrews 6:4-6 would be an absolutely terrifying verse to everyone who loves an apostate or backslider, especially their prodigal spouse.    We all thankfully know of many cases where it did not actually turn out to be “impossible” to renew the person to repentance,  and as Jesus Himself stated, “with man this is impossible, but not with God for nothing will be impossible for God.”  

So, was the writer of Hebrews actually “blowing smoke” when he cautioned that apostates cannot be restored to the kingdom of God?  Or is it that the Calvinists are right about a faulty regeneration?   There are actually three possible explanations for the discrepancy between that Hebrews passage and what many of us blessedly experience.     The first possibility is what the Calvinists are quick to claim in all cases:   the person actually wasn’t regenerated, and thus, wasn’t indwelt with the Holy Spirit until some point in time after they supposedly “fell away”.     We have so many harlot churches with pulpits occupied by wolves and “hirelings” that we cannot discount that possibility for a certain percentage of the cases.     However, those who insist that this circumstance is always the case like to cite 1 John 2:19, which (in context) speaks of antichrists in the last days:

They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

The Calvinists give this verse their own spin, as if it said, “so that it would be shown that none of them were ever of us.”   John goes on to clarify, however,

Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.  (verse 22)

…..which makes a great segue into the second possibility for the discrepancy presented in Hebrews 6:4-6, which is the context around whom the writer was addressing, and why they were being issued that holy caution.    As John the Apostle was warning, this, too, has to do with denying and specifically renouncing the identity of Christ.     The epistle to the Hebrew believers living in Rome under the reign of terror of Nero was written because these believers had an offer outstanding to return to good standing in the Jewish synagogue in Rome, and thereby escape the horrific persecutions Nero was imposing in his all-out war on Christ-followers.    But there was a big problem:  in order to return to the synagogue, each individual believer had to renounce the deity and Sonship of Christ.

Therefore  everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
– Matthew 10:32-33

Based on what Jesus said about the “unpardonable sin”, this would also have to be a permanent renouncement.      SIFC didn’t hear of either Harris or Sampson saying anything that approached such a renouncement….

HARRIS (7/26/2019, on twitter):   “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.” By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”

SAMPSON (early August, 2019 on Instagram):  “Time for some real talk… I’m genuinely losing my faith.. and it doesn’t bother me… like, what bothers me now is nothing… I am so happy now, so at peace with the world.. it’s crazy / this is a soapbox moment so here I go xx how many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it….”How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it….”Christians can be the most judgemental (sic) people on the planet – they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people… but it’s not for me. I am not in any more.”

[    SIFC:   Marty Sampson, we should all note, was never called to follow or place his faith in “Christians”, he was called to follow Christ.   We may have to concede this particular case to the Calvinists, after all.]

Some of us are old enough to remember Bob Dylan’s brief season of discipleship ( “Gotta Serve Somebody“) before reverting back to Judaism.     The fact is that many prodigals who are still trying to fill a God-shaped hole in their heart with any number of tempting God-substitutes have various reasons for being blinded and deceived, and when this happens, few actually renounce Christ, so much as they attempt to “hide out” from Him for a season.     We tend to call this “falling away” or “apostasy”  or “deconstruction” (as Harris would have it), but often what they are doing is either testing their limits with the Father, or seeking to “own their own faith” after being brought up all their lives in a Christian home.    As long as they don’t run out of time on this earth before the Hound of Heaven catches up with them, the result is often redemptive.

A few perceptive Christ-followers commended Harris for “owning” his season of backsliding rather than faking , “reinventing” or “redefining” the terms of his discipleship from behind the pulpit.

As Christian Post contributor Will Vining put it in an August 10 commentary,

“The reason I commend Harris is how he handled his departing. As I mentioned in my last article, A Warning Against Progressive Christianity, the progressive Church is full of those who made the same journey as Harris. The main difference between Harris and the progressive Christian is one denounced God and left the faith, the other molded God into the god they wanted, thus making an idol.”

Those who attempt this contribute to the sometimes well-earned reputation for hypocrisy in the church.     SIFC said a hearty public “amen” to that, but added that we should all pray that those hounds of heaven pursue him  and Marty Sampson relentlessly, and for the sake of their respective covenant families, that season would be mercifully brief.

Peter also had some chilling things to say about apostasy in the form of backsliding, and made it clear that he neither believed in “once saved, always saved” nor subscribed to the idea that true believers “never” fell away:

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”  – 2 Peter 2:20

This blog post was mostly written before SIFC got a chance to read Dr. Michael Brown’s take on these two high profile “fallings away”, and believes he also provides good insights why we should still intercede and not give up on people who have taken up residence in the Far Country:

Can an Apostate Return to the Faith?

Joshua Harris has departed the faith, he says, to go pursue friendship with the LGBT community, but we all need to keep in mind God’s power to make this process work in reverse even more frequently, bringing apostate people back from that world.     The Mainwaring family is just one great example of this, out of several.   Listen to Doug’s personal testimony (starting at about 3:30) from  2014:

Mainwaring (who returned to his estranged wife and the Catholic faith):  “…kids deserve both a mom and a dad in the home.   For that reason, I have as much problem with no-fault divorce as I have with same-sex marriage, and it took some doing, but after a dozen years of being apart, my ‘ex’ wife and I pulled our family back together again.   And that was over 3 years ago now, and we could not be happier, and I want to say again tonight, I LOVE MY WIFE!”   

Guarding our hearts is the deliberate process of finding out accurately who Jesus is, and rediscovering that fact as many times in life as necessary.    The fact that a practicing homosexual could fall in love with Jesus again made falling back in love with his God-joined, one-flesh life companion a comparative “cake walk” even with same-sex attraction.

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”   Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”   And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

What “rock”?   The foundational, divinely-revealed, Spirit-whispered unshakeable conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, of course!

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