Tag Archives: Restoration

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

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!

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!

“SIFC-isms” … A Random Collection


by Standerinfamilycourt

But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.  – Matthew 12:36

After five years of writing this blog, and slowly building its modest following, it’s nice to reflect whether a net contribution has been made to the marriage permanence culture since the first several posts went “live” on August 23, 2014, and the accompanying Facebook page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional was launched.    In “George Bailey” fashion, what exactly would be missing if the Lord hadn’t taken “standerinfamilycourt” on this unwilling journey of marital estrangement, of quibbling with the corrupted pulpit, and with the equally-corrupted courtroom?    When the Lord finally ordains that this keyboard be silenced, and no one survives to pay the annual hosting fees, what might the audience miss most?

First, SIFC must humbly acknowledge that almost all of what follows has built in some way, or been corroborated by, the Holy Spirit revelations granted to other faithful disciples, authors, videographers and assorted truth-warriors in the Lord’s Army.   Only one or two of these was the direct, independent revelation of the Holy Spirit to this blogger personally.   Even the tradition of beginning and ending each post with a scripture quote is owed to the irreplaceable legacy of the late Rev. Bob Steinkamp of Rejoice Marriage Ministries, a returned, repented prodigal husband and marriage permanence ambassador until the Lord took him home in 2010.

It would be an understatement to say that most of these “SIFC-isms” have started fights.   In August 2014, it’s no exaggeration at all to recall that most of Christendom considered it “uncouth” to explicitly link 1 Corinthians 6:9 with Luke 16:18, even though Jesus did exactly that in the 13 verses that immediately follow the remarriage “clobber verse”.   Many a hireling (pastor) over the years has accused SIFC of being “a divider of the brethren”, such is the sorry state of our culture which directly resulted from the enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce.

1.)  There are no “ex” spouses in the kingdom of God, only ex-adulterers.

2.) The marriage covenant is unconditionally founded on Genesis 15:8-17, and its parties include a superior (divine) and inferior (human) party.   This makes the covenant binding on the divine party, even if the human party violates the covenant.

3.)  The God-joined one-flesh entity is not only a supernaturally-created party to the holy matrimony covenant, but also a spiritual weapon in the miracle restoration of a believer’s covenant family.

4.)  All worthy contemporary writings on the nature of marriage and its biblical permanence are written hermeneutically, and (conversely) all corrupt writings on the topic, at best, can only rest on 1 or 2 out of 5 of the essential disciplined principles.

5.)  #1M1W4L

6.)  #somuch4irreconcilabledifferences

7.) #noexceptionsnoexcuses

8.) #LukeSixteenEighteen

9.) Biblical grounds for divorce:  to repent of one’s adulterous “marriage” to someone else’s spouse, in order to reconcile with the God-joined spouse of our youth.

10.) But what about the BELIEVING spouse who departs?

11.) If your bible says that a heaven-or-hell issue is involved, it’s not “legalism” (ditto for similar assertions about “the essentials of the faith”).

12.) Why are contemporary pastors legalistically trying to apply Deut. 24:1-4 on a unisex basis when Moses did not deliver the regulation on that basis?    What LAND (given by God as an “inheritance”) is being “defiled” when covenant families are made whole again?

13.)  Jesus not only taught that divorce was “immoral”, He taught that it was metaphysically impossible.

14.)  Jesus didn’t teach marriage “permanence”, He taught absolute holy matrimony indissolubility.

15.) Remarriage adultery is not the “unpardonable sin”, you say?   You’re right!   And you should be singing your praises to the high heavens that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only sin under heaven that mankind is given NO OPPORTUNITY to repent of!

This, dear readers, is the key evidence that will convict “standerinfamilycourt” of unique sedition against 21st century  “churchianity” and against the Sexual Revolution in general.  It is probably not an exhaustive list, but only the items that have generated the most “spirited discussions” or countering pieces, and been the most re-shared.    A closing challenge:   This is a very big job.  What evidence will uniquely convict you for your role in the struggle, dear reader?

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
– Matthew 10:28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

The Apostasy of Joshua Harris: Reversible or No?


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, shobebשׁוֹבֵב  ) 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!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

We Respectfully Disagree With Rev. Wells’ Wrap-up to “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?” Here’s Why


by Standerinfamilycourt

And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
– Malachi 2:15

We periodically rerun the book series by the late Assemblies of God pastor and bible college president Milton T. Wells on our Facebook page, because until the mid-2000’s no book came closer to the undiluted truth of God concerning man’s “divorce” and adulterous remarriage.     John Piper’s books are roughly equivalent to Wells’ book, but they don’t teach (nor does Dr. Piper actually practice) disciplined hermeneutics necessary to overcome all the damage that’s been done to our contemporary English language bible translations.     Rev. Wells’ deeper concern for a better hermeneutical grasp is probably due to the fact that he was an Arminian who believed that the “born again” (those sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit) can still walk away from the faith and wind up in hell, rather than a Calvinist who believes all eternal losses for the born-again Christian are limited to “loss of rewards”.

Yet the fact remains that both Wells and Piper came to the same unsupported conclusion, that despite “remarriage” being adultery by the rigorous case they each made,  and despite Paul’s multiple warnings that unrepented adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, both concluded the “remarried” must not leave their continuously-adulterous civil-only union to put their covenant family back together, or (failing that) to obey Paul in remaining celibate until that true spouse has passed away.   Both men presented impeccable, or near-impeccable cases for why these subsequent unions are not actual marriages in God’s eyes, yet neither shepherd managed to follow the case they made to its unavoidable conclusion concerning true repentance and restitution.   More than one previous post has dissected Piper’s faulty (and sometimes spuriously dishonest) assumptions about this, so we won’t repeat what was said earlier.    We will focus here on what Rev. Wells had to say (with the denomination’s General Superintendent literally looking directly over the author’s shoulder as the latter wrote the Foreword to Wells’ book).

From pages 48 through 51 (Chapter VII) of the original text….

“Many a spouse of an unscriptural union is in deep distress when he (or she) learns through the reading of the Scripture that he (or she) is party to an unscrip­tural union. A letter written to C. Morse Ward, speaker on Revivaltime, a gospel broadcast of the Assemblies of God, is typical. It follows, in part, as it ap­peared in The Gospel Gleaners:

Dear Brother Ward,

I have lived in sin and rebellion against God, but now I want to live wholly for Christ no matter what the cost. I have three living husbands, and a voice keeps telling me I should leave the husband to whom I am now married. He says that he does not know what he would do were I to leave him. Am I re­sponsible for this man’s soul?   I am restless and constantly haunted that I am living in adultery. I have four married children and I want to be a better tes­timony to them. My present husband has given me a beautiful home, and we have all the money we need, but how can I enjoy it?

Mrs.____. 

 

A portion of C. Morse Ward’s answer follows: At the well of Samaria Jesus met a woman who had a similar problem. It is interesting to read that story in the Gospel of John, chapter 4. She had had five husbands and Jesus said of her present companion, ”He whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” There is no direct statement that Jesus sent her back to any one of the five.

( SIFC:  We dealt hermeneutically with the above popular heresy of C. Morse Ward in this post, “What About That Samaritan Woman?”)

“Sin tangles our lives to such an extent that although forgiveness can be obtained, certain things can never be straightened out. Paul could never bring back to life the Christians he had slain as Saul, the persecutor. Much of the havoc he wrought in his rage against Christ (Acts 8:3) he could never undo. He simply lived by this rule: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philip­pians 3:13,14.  It seems to me that there are certain things that you are powerless to undo. “

( SIFC:   Since living on, unrepentant, in a state of ongoing sin necessarily takes a person in the opposite direction of sanctification needed to reach the marriage supper of the Lamb, we have valid cause to question how one can reasonably expect to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”, while continuing to covet and retain the purloined spouse of another living person with whom God did not make you sarx mia, but instead, you made yourself hen soma.    The idea that we “can’t undo” a human fiction is (well) fictional.   David righteously recovered his God-joined covenant wife Michal from Paltiel, though he also had non-covenant wives (some of them widows) with whom he was only hen soma.    John the Baptizer told Herod in no uncertain terms “it is not lawful for you to have YOUR BROTHER’s wife” after there was no question from historical accounts that he had “married” her under Jewish law.  Comparing the sinful past ACTS of taking the life of the saints, with the ongoing sin of continuing on with driving a stolen car, or spending from a stolen wallet, or continuing to sleep with the God-joined spouse of another living person is comparing apples to oranges, and is dishonest at best. )

It is true that you have your present husband to consider. Do you want to leave him a divorced man? Would he then be clear to marry again?

(   SIFC:  Here’s where building on a right, hermeneutical foundation as laid out by Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 is crucial to getting the answers to these questions right.   The foremost consideration with both our covenant and any non-covenant “spouse” is whether they would or could die in a continuous state of sin that will keep them out of heaven, according to what clear scripture says — ignored by “Brother Ward” here, if we don’t take the right action to fully repent.  How can we legitimately say we “love” someone or anyone if we don’t care about where they will spend their eternity?    Will this guy be left “a divorced man”?    Not likely, unless he already was one civilly before entering the “marriage”.
Yes, he’ll be civilly divorced as a result of the required act of repentance, but we have to look at what Jesus said about the validity of the union to begin with, and we have to look at where Jesus said “divorce” comes from…and doesn’t come from.    “Brother Ward” is once again conveniently ignoring crystal-clear scriptures:  He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not [ever] been this way.”   
If this “husband” has a living, estranged wife, exiting the false “marriage” frees him to redeem the generational sin of what he’s done and put his covenant family back together with the one he never actually ceased to be married to.   Can this released “husband” remarry?   That obviously depends on whether he, too, has a living, estranged true spouse of his youth.  He may remarry her, or if there is no “her” he may marry for the FIRST time.)

You won’t solve one question by creating a dozen new ones. Entering a sort of Protestant clois­ter is not the answer to your problem. The answer to your problem is in the words of Jesus to another woman, ”Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” 27

( SIFC:   An essential part, we would respectfully submit, to “go and sin no more” is this: Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”   – 1 Corinthians 6;18-20.    In light of what Christ said about becoming a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God in identical circumstances (Matthew 19:12), it’s hard to square “Brother Ward’s” out-of-context advice with the bulk of in-context scripture.

(C. M. Ward: “Letter Column,” Gospel Gleaners, September 2, 1956, Spring­field, Missouri, Gospel Publishing House.)

“Some conservative teachers of the doctrine of divorce find in I Cor.7:10,11,17 and 20 permission by the Apostle Paul for converted spouses of adulterous un­ions, contracted before they were regenerated, to remain together. They base their conviction on the Scriptures and reasons which follow. The Apostle said. “And unto the married I command . . . Let not the wife depart from her hus­band” (I Cor. 7: 10). These teachers reason that this statement has reference to both valid and adulterous marriages, since it is assumed that there must have been many converts in the Corinthian Church who had been married the second time before they were both born of the Spirit, and whose first mates were still living when they entered the Church.

( SIFC:  Such “conservative teachers of the doctrine of divorce” to whom Rev. Wells refers, still are not applying principled hermeneutics,  but he fails to blow the “h”-whistle on them here, whereas some contemporary pastors have done so in recent years.   We previously dealt with this popular 1 Corinthians 7 faux pas in this blog post, and again in this one.   Following through on what Jesus repeatedly said about the invalidity of subsequent “marriages” while our original spouse still lives, and what Paul repeatedly said about the only thing that “dissolves” our original marriage, it is a stretch to envision anyone who is not either widowed or never-married being “called” while in anything  but our original God-joined union, plus a possible tacked-on, papered-over immoral relationship.)

Was not Corinth a city notorious for its licentiousness? It is believed by these teachers that the Apostle was referring to Christian spouses of adulterous unions in I Cor. 7: 17, and 20. “Only, let each member go on living in the same condition which the Lord originally allotted to him, and in which he was when he heard God’s call” (I Cor. 7: 17, A. S. Way’s translation). “In whatever condition of life each one heard God’s call, in that let him remain” (I Cor.7:20, A. S. Way).

(   SIFC:   Remember when we spoke earlier of the General Superintendent literally looking over author Wells’ shoulder?   Watch below for how our intrepid author — whom you can almost see holding his nose as he types away, navigates the “pickle” he has pulled out of the canning jar… On the “plus” side, this isn’t a dedicated chapter, but is mercifully buried in the Appendix.  How ironic that a hermeneutically-meticulous shepherd is forced to relax the disciplined hermeneutics which his denominational superiors felt free to ignore with their bone-headed, politically correct insertions!)

Ralph M. Riggs, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God (1956) presents the status of those described thus: When the Passover blood was applied to the door posts and lintels of the Jewish home in Egypt. Jehovah said, “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2). A new life begins at Calvary. Jesus’ cleanses the past and accepts us as we are when we come to Him. “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife” (I Corinthians7, 20, 27), “This is good for the present distress,” Paul said concerning their problems then. The same can be said of our similar problem now. Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Let the status quo prevail. The past is under the Blood. Start life anew as a new creature in Christ Jesus. To this agree the experiences of many forgiven Blood-bought souls and the witness of the blessed Holy Spirit…

( SIFC:  Above is the last thing the author said – through others – of what the individual Christian should do who, for whatever reason, is in an adulterous “remarriage” to someone else’s God-joined spouse — and not even Wells’ own words or thoughts, but quoting the words and thoughts of those who outranked him in the denomination, before he himself moves on to tackle the “safer” subject of adulterously remarried church leaders and their role in the church…. until Wells finally says this to wrap up, in his own words:)

“God indeed genuinely saves the souls of men and women of unions disapproved by Christ who sin in ignorance during their unregenerate state, but when Christian professors continue deliberately to walk in darkness, they cannot claim I John 1:7. “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. ”

( SIFC: Rev. Wells would have surely been aghast, had he lived long enough to witness the development of homosexual “marriage” in civilly-legal form.  Might he have taken a bit different position than the above, had the Lord had a chance to make His own LGBT counterpoint to this spurious argument before Rev. Wells graduated to heaven?    We dealt more fully with this popular “last resort” heresy, after all the other “exceptions” and human excuses fail rigorous scriptural examination,  in our earlier post, “But Mr. (or Mrs.) New Creation Hasn’t Passed Away”.)

The pas­sages discussed above (I Cor.7:10, 17, 20, and I Tim.3:2) may give evidence that God tolerates the continuation of an unscriptural marital relationship entered into before conversion, but they do not indicate that, by them, God validates such a union as acceptable and approved by Himself any more than He approved of Israel’s having a king, although He tolerated it. See a fuller treatment of
I Cor.7:10,17,20 in the Appendix on pages  108 through 112 and I Tim 3:2 on page162. The texts will there be viewed in the light of their context.”

( SIFC:  Rev. Wells suggests above, apparently without a lot of personal conviction that marked all that he had to say in the body of his book, that the last-mentioned scriptures “may” provide evidence that God “tolerates” departures from Christ’s commandment to allow living on in a union God did not join, and then he gratuitously splits hairs between God’s “acceptance” and His “tolerance”.    This, of course, flies completely in the face of Jesus’ message in the sermon on the mount, where Jesus declared  such days to be over, and kingdom of God standards to be in full effect henceforth.    There is no objective biblical evidence that Paul recognized man’s divorce as dissolving holy matrimony in anything he said in 1 Corinthians 7, or that he ever addressed “divorced” people anywhere in that chapter. )

In conclusion, even if such “toleration” were true in the 1st century church, how could such possibly still be valid, 18 centuries later, especially after history tells us the saints of the first four centuries of the church had eradicated divorce and remarriage so completely that, as Rev. Wells himself quotes historian Kenneth E. Kirk in documenting, that this New Testament morality controlled the church and general culture for 15 of those centuries, despite the fact that the concept was completely new to the world up to that point?

“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals?  Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage.   Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?

“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”

No, such accommodation is strictly carnal man’s idea, and indulging it inevitably leads precisely to a place  Rev. Wells also did not live long enough to witness:  pollster George Barna famously documenting in 2000 that a full 90% of the evangelical respondents he surveyed admitting two things, as a matter of fact:

(1) their last “remarriage” occurred after, not before, they considered themselves “born again”

(2) at least one divorce had also taken place at their own initiation or mutual consent since their salvation experience.

If indissolubility was in reality a part-time, circumstantial “ideal”, without heaven or hell consequences for living in willful disobedience, it would hardly have been worth Rev. Wells’ studious efforts to write this book in the first place!   The concept of indissolubility (as contrasted with the ideal of “permanence”) demands its unavoidable conclusion with regard to what repentance from an unlawful union entails, especially in light of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:30-31, and said again in Luke 16:18-31.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.   –  Proverbs 29:25

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?  May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?  Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.   –   Romans 6:1-4

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Standers, Are We “Reluctantly Divorced”…Or Immorally Abandoned Under Force of Law?

by Standerinfamilycourt

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..”
– Proverbs 23:7

“standerinfamilycourt” has devoted the past nearly 5 years connecting the community of covenant marriage standers with other communities of Christians and social conservatives who are committed to peeling back the Sexual Revolution and reforming U.S. “family laws” in an example to the rest of the Western world.  Some of these allies are in differing faith traditions, and some of those individuals have a huge leg up on the stander community in terms of their national influence and basic ability to be heard politically.   Others are in “remarriages”, and some are in both situations.  This effort to find common ground for the common good has been met with “mixed reviews” on all sides at various times.   That’s OK with SIFC, who can handle it if some effectiveness is gained, and authentic covenant standers thereby gain a voice in the reform process they would not otherwise have.   Our brand of Christian discipleship has been pasted and smeared as a “cult” for long enough!  As for our reluctant (and sometimes embarrassed) allies, we hope Jesus’ voice comes through a bit clearer than if we were not visible in their lives and in their sense of mission.

For this reason, SIFC travelled to Lake Charles, Louisiana at the end of April to participate in the Ruth Institute’s “Summit for Survivors of the Sexual Revolution”.     You can read more about that terrific event  in this earlier blog post.   About a year or so prior to that, a post by “Ruth’s” founder,  Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, struck this “reluctant divorcee” as (well)… trivializing…and misrepresenting God’s truth.    She had referred to standers as the “reluctantly divorced” in some new pamphlets she was calling attention to at the time.     The Ruth Institute’s work and publications are important, both as the only significant, consistent national voice for repeal of unilateral divorce laws, but also as a well-published, well-respected social science organization, having this past year added an academic statistician to their staff.   Both terms. “reluctantly” and “divorced”, reflect offensively to many of those who, first of all, don’t believe we are “divorced” in God’s eyes, because our wayward and estranged spouse is still alive (Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39; Matthew 19:8),  and even if they weren’t alive, with full biblical justification, we would regard ourselves as widowed, not divorced.     Dr. Morse graciously asked at that time, what alternative label would be more acceptable to the covenant marriage stander community, so SIFC asked some standers in a social media private group for their input.   It proved to be a tough exercise to come up with something crisp and concise that was adequately reflective of the conscience violation experienced as a result of man’s laws being in direct opposition to God’s laws on marriage.   There was no male input volunteered at the time, but about five ladies offered input.    The common theme was “forcibly divorced against our conscience”.     The majority of standers did not seem to object to the “divorced” label, however, as much as they objected to the “reluctantly” label.    At least one of these ladies, if not two, had also been forced through an “annulment” by the Roman Catholic Church so that their “ex-spouse” could marry the adulteresses (who had coveted their husbands and broken up their homes) and take communion in that church.    The inquiry results were messaged back to Dr. Morse late in 2017.

Those who truly believe Christ’s words, “from the beginning it was never so!”  don’t believe that man’s various contrivances to disobey God and create distance or sundering, or legal attempts to sever the supernatural one-flesh (Greek: sarx mia) entity are actually real.     Those attempts constitute the heinous presumption to speak for God, the superior party in an unconditional covenant with the one-flesh entity which His hand has created between true husband and wife.   Although the Ruth Institute is a Catholic organization that retains some doctrine around marriage indissolubility, the Roman Catholic Church holds to a watered-down official version that allows for “annulments” , sometimes years or decades later, wherein they claim that some impediment not known at the time of the wedding caused God not to join or covenant with that union.   Many a spouse is “reluctantly” exposed to an even worse set of church papers making the false and presumptuous claim that God didn’t join their marriage for reason “x”–after all the persecution, larceny and perjury they endured in “family court”.     To such a stander, what’s being described as “reluctance” feels more like gang rape and moral conscience violation!     “Reluctance” is a response to something you didn’t want but eventually acquiesced to, (as one male stander put it).  One cannot conscionably say such a thing about gang rape without inevitably slandering and demoralizing the victim in the process.   In Dr. Morse’s case, we know the injury is not intentional, but is due to an “out-of-synch” frame of reference arising from personal theology and personal marital history.     As she publicly acknowledged at the Summit, she first learned of our movement and its general contours through SIFC less than 5 years ago.

#RuthSummit 2019 was all about giving a voice to those victimized by the social and political “narrative” of the Sexual Revolution.     As SIFC found out, however, there are limits to that voice in public if printed materials are in the inventory of said nonprofit, which are(unwittingly and unfortunately) bolstering one of the key tenets of that narrative.    In response to a post of one of the videos where an adult child of divorce (neither of whose parents, she reports, were actually “reluctant”) gave her testimony at the April Summit, under a banner that read “Reluctantly Divorced Panel”,  SIFC again commented about the offensiveness and inaccuracy of this label to some of those being referred to by it:

I’m thankful for Dr. Morse and all her efforts, but feel the term ‘reluctantly divorced’ seriously trivializes Christian standers. Standers stand in the first place because they believe Jesus when He said, “from the beginning it [man’s divorce] was not so!”
Most standers, by essence, don’t consider themselves “divorced” in God’s eyes, but rather immorally abandoned by both the law and their spouse.

I guess you could call *forcibly and morally violated* “reluctant”, but it’s kind of like saying someone was “reluctantly raped”. Would you say that to a rape victim? I sure wouldn’t!

Happy to have been in the room for Christy’s riveting testimony, and it made me so thankful that my husband and I raised our children to adulthood before the troubles started.”

This was not said on her page nor the Ruth Institute page, but on activist Jeff Morgan’s personal wall, without any idea that Dr. Morse would take it as a personal, hostile “swipe”, especially after our earlier exchange on the topic.    The PM that arrived the next day was unsettling, (in part: )

“…could you do me the kindness of not picking a fight with me in public? criminey. You’ve made your point privately…I’ve agreed with you in many ways. I cannot go back and retract all that material. Plz. I’m under enough pressure as it is. ” 

It occurred to “standerinfamilycourt” that perhaps this public statement could reasonably be faulted for not legitimately speaking for all covenant marriage standers, or a sufficiently large swath of them to have merited the comment.    That hadn’t been objectively tested, to be honest.  The comment was based on the open-ended input of the prior small group of ladies.  Out of a group page membership of 300-some, only those who agreed probably volunteered input, after all.    So….it was back to the polls to validate whether SIFC should have just let it go for the sake of feelings and friendship.

This time a formal poll with choices was set up on four different standers pages,  most of them open pages this time, including one UK page.     This has yielded some very interesting observations, and has this time had good input from male standers.  The following, from the most active set of responses was typical of the input from the other pages where the poll ran….

As everyone can see, a slight majority did say “No Big Deal”.    The second most frequent response was that quite a few were unaware of the issue at all.   Upward of a third of standers responding overall reflected a strong negative response to being labeled a “reluctant divorcee”, and one registered a mild negative response.      Those who responded that they were unaware of the label (who does that?) were invited to go back and make an additional selection.    So far, none have, so the implication is that this unaware group also did not feel that strongly about it, perhaps half of all covenant marriage standers who are standing for the marriage of their youth.    Those who also gave verbal comments about what they’d prefer as a label echoed the responses of a year ago,  responding a bit more negatively to the “reluctant” part (feeling that “forcibly” better reflected the conscience violation they suffered), than the “divorced” part of the label.   Those who felt “trivialized” or “demeaned” tended to object to both parts of the label.    Most of the really negative responses came from men, which is understandable, because they’ve been stripped of their God-assigned (and accountable) role toward their own flesh and blood (including scripturallytheir estranged and possibly “remarried” wife), while having done nothing objectively wrong to deserve this outcome.   One of the men commented:

I don’t like ‘reluctant’ It’s like we went along with it even though we didn’t want to.

I prefer Unwillingly Divorced.”

His comments drew 4 “likes”, out of a total of 13 responders in that group post.

Overall,  among the 4 group posts, there were 25 unique responses, breaking down as follows, by degree of perceived offensiveness:

Who Does That?  – 24%  (6 responses)
No Big Deal – 28%  (7 responses)
Mildly Annoyed – 4%  (1 response)
Demeaned  – 20%   (5 responses)
Trivialized   – 24%  (6 responses)

Due to varying beliefs, the covenant marriage standers are far from a monolithic group of saints.  Several interesting preliminary observations can be drawn from these results.   First, it appears that nearly 75% of this community is aware of and integrated with the activities and communications of external groups who are engaged in various aspects of “family law” and moral cultural reform, a very gratifying result, following almost 5 years of this blogger’s labors  behind the keyboard and in conferences.    Indeed, many in this community watched the #RuthSummit simulcast in April and several others have reported watching the videos.    Secondly, the ones who responded “No Big Deal” tended to be the ones who believe that scriptures like 1 Corinthians 7:11 make reconciliation with a repenting wayward spouse completely optional according to preference, should the opportunity present, rather than morally imperative per scriptures like Matthew 18:23-35, 2 Corinthians 5:18 (and others).    So long as they remain celibate until their prodigal spouse’s physical death, “they’re good with God”, in their own estimation.   For them, the sense of conscience violation from having a paper “dissolution” forced upon them is much fainter, even if their sense of personal injury remains very great indeed.  Thirdly, while close to 50% overall posted some degree of a negative response to the “reluctant divorcee” label, they were almost all men.  They are the ones who feel the most responsibility for their blocked role as the undershepherd of the family sheep assigned by God to their personal care, and they are the ongoing forgivers in the group.   It is interesting that all four of the respondents on the UK group page actually live in North America, where the process timelines for unilateral family-shredding are counted in days or months rather than the 5 years the process currently takes in the UK.     The sample responses, to the best of SIFC’s knowledge were all from evangelicals, with no currently practicing or nominal Catholics, and a small number of former Catholics responding.

One may rightly ask, “Is 25 a representative sample size with respect to all covenant marriage standers?”    We need to first clarify what a covenant marriage stander is, for those who don’t regularly follow this blog.    A covenant marriage, per scripture, is the marriage of our youth or its widowed replacement, without regard to any religious test, where there is no prior estranged spouse still living:  a never-married or widowed man with a never-married or widowed woman.    A covenant stander is someone who has  been declared “divorced” under the laws of men, but who is remaining celibate in obedience to Christ, even after their spouse “remarries” under the laws of men.    As shown above in the results, the actual motives for remaining celibate until widowed or reconciled can and do vary considerably, which impacts whether the term “reluctant divorcee” causes them injury and offense.  To answer our question about sample size, we need to first estimate how many of these there are in the online world.    An imperfect but reasonable way to gauge that is to estimate that covenant marriage standers have historically run about 10% of all religious standers, including those who “stand” for the subsequent “remarriage” of their personal preference, or for the most recent of them.    The largest marriage permanence ministries do not tend to filter out people who are standing for “remarriages”,  preferring a “wheat and tares” approach to running their ministries.   These typically have about 20,000 followers at any given time.

Based on these assumptions, a reasonable estimate of the total number of English-speaking covenant standers is around 2,000 globally, give or take.   The U.S. divorce lawyers tell us that of the slightly less than 1,000,000 U.S. civil divorces occurring each year, about 5% of them or 50,000 couples per year eventually reconcile.    As mentioned, there are significantly more noncovenant standers, hence noncovenant reconciliations of varying durations just in the U.S., and this is true regardless of the durability of the reconciliation.    It is somewhat possible that there are up to 5,000 covenant marriage standers just in the U.S.,  as an upper bound, which would include (and perhaps be dominated by) practicing Catholics who may still believe in some mitigating, extrabiblical doctrines such as “nullity” and “purgatory” which, in turn, would be directly relevant to their feelings about the severity of conscience violation.   Based on our estimate of the covenant marriage stander population, we only received a tenth of the responses (at best) we really needed for the results to be reasonably representative of all covenant marriage standers who are online, so we can’t claim these results as being scientific, only indicative of the justification to say something about the injuriousness of the “reluctant divorcee” label.  That indicated reliable sample size actually coincides with the typical size of most such group page (overlapping) memberships of covenant standers, so close to 100% group participation would be required to get there with scientific assurance.   Some of those groups do have a fair number of practicing Catholics in their membership who may not believe that dying while in a non-widowed “remarriage” necessarily sends everyone to hell, so may be less motivated to respond to the poll, or would respond “No Big Deal” if they did respond.   By no means were Catholics deliberately excluded.  The poll will be kept open indefinitely, and this post updated if results change as more responses are gathered.   This initial sample was gathered over about 36 hours’ time.    SIFC did not run this poll on Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional due to the large number of very “loyal” trolls and non-standers who follow our community page.

With all the statistical boredom out of the way about the impact of the reluctant divorcee label on the covenant stander community, adding to the trauma of at least hundreds of people who are praying for their spouse’s complete repentance and removal from legalized subsequent unions that could send them to hell as rebels against the kingdom of God,  “standerinfamilycourt” will now share the response given privately to Dr. Morse:

I honestly didn’t think about your printed materials inventory.   I was just hoping to raise some awareness.   I do realize there’s also some theological differences probably involved as well in this situation.  I didn’t do it maliciously, or with any intent to discredit you, only a strong sense that standers are being misrepresented in direct proportion to our belief of scripture.

“I’m sorry you were offended, Dr. Morse, but some of us have been suffering dignity blows on top of gaping wounds for a long time.  I hope you’ll give some thought to the point itself.  I must sing your praises in public in at least a 10:1 ratio. 

“Most sincere longtime standers do not believe human authorities have any say from God over marriage, and that He has never recognized divorce for anyone.  To hear a national figure repeatedly affirm the immoral civil law as “truth” and its impact as “mild and recoverable” is hurtful. And most of us wish others could see the magnitude of the religious human rights violation being forcibly “divorced” (that is, immorally abandoned with legal sanction) represents.  The ugly reality is we were the guinea pigs for everything happening now to everyone else on the religious rights front, but almost everyone remains clueless about that.  It’s like the famous Niemoller quote, but an extra line could be appended: 

‘…then they came for me…(but still nobody cared about the Jews…”)  …except God who is dealing with the whole nation accordingly and will not be appeased.’  

“This Equality Act…which we might get to dodge for another 2 or 6 years if there’s no national repentance, is literally going to be Congress doing to all other Christian consciences what was done to us by our state legislatures.  Time is getting short and we’re all under pressure.  I hope my sense of urgency at raising awareness can ultimately be forgiven.   Who knows how much longer biblical, pro-family voices will have a non-criminalized voice?   FB just shut down my advertising account today after almost 5 successful years, for submitting ads on a weekly basis that ‘violate their policies’ (many of which they approved and ran anyway, taking the money).”    [End of response]

The Ruth Institute certainly has no lack of pressure, engaged as it is with dividing time between longterm non-political activities aimed at chipping away at the root disease culturally, and a flurry of other activities managing and reporting the plethora of festering symptoms, including the significant fallout in the Roman Catholic Church, from which the bulk of that pressure currently emanates.    They manage to do a superb job with what they have to work with.  “standerinfamilycourt”, on the other hand, is lock-focused on going straight after the root disease politically and culturally, and feels most acutely the pressure from the ticking clock of history repeating itself, while ministering in the background to many of its most overlooked and discounted wound victims.    There isn’t going to be perfect congruence of efforts, but that needn’t prevent an effective working alliance nor should feedback feel threatening to either effort.   It is effective and necessary for “Ruth” to retain and build the support of Roman Catholic leadership, while finding some way to work effectively with the sola scriptura crowd that sustains the covenant marriage movement.

One of the featured speakers at #RuthSummit was Leila Miller, author of the book “Primal Loss” which gathered a lot of data about adult children of divorce who feel marginalized for cultural and political reasons to fit the false narratives that “children are resilient” and “parents deserve to be happy in their love life”.
Her 70 responses were heavily weighted toward trauma, hence she gained an influential platform through the Ruth Institute and Catholic media to speak out for them.     The trauma of covenant marriage standers from false labels and politically-correct assumptions is just as real, but that trauma doesn’t fit very well the counter-narrative that all children deserve to grow up in a home with both biological parents, no matter what.    That “no matter what” invalidly excludes concerns about the prior conflicting rights of covenant children and grandchildren at whose expense such an ideal necessarily comes, and with scripture-based beliefs about heaven and hell which may conflict with Roman Catholic beliefs or doctrines, or may even conflict with the dominant,  politically “safe” evangelical view of those things.   The very least someone pursuing an effective, engaged coalition can do is listen to this kind of inconvenient feedback without taking offense or presuming malicious intent.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
– 2 Corinthians 5:18

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Remain Chaste or Be Reconciled: Two Co-Equal “Options” Per The Apostle?

by Standerinfamilycourt

“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”
– Genesis 3:15-16

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
– 1 Corinthians 7:10-11

Jack and Jill were joined in inseverable holy matrimony many years ago.   Upon valid, witnessed vows, God’s hand created a one-flesh new entity, with which He then unconditionally covenanted as the superior party.   Jack and Jill had no children in the brief time before their estrangement, and after a time, Jill began to feel emotionally-abused by Jack.    Jill reasoned that this was because she must have married Jack “outside God’s will” and satan, more than happy to oblige, whispered to her: “if you stay, this is going to turn physical”.
(The Evil One’s very name, it should be noted, literally means “accuser of men”.)    She availed herself of man’s unilateral no-fault divorce laws, after the fashion of the majority of women in our culture.    Not long thereafter, she “married” Jim, thinking she could now have a Christ-centered marriage.    The hireling pastor involved was no obstacle to the second wedding.   Domestically, Jim was better able to manage Jill’s emotions than Jack, and children were born into this adulterous union.   Several more years passed.

One day Jill encountered serious covenant marriage standers online who pointed out the mountain of truth in God’s word that “remarriage” to another while her original husband lives is adultery, not just on the wedding night, but every night thereafter.   At first, Jill quite naturally resisted, but nevertheless she took some time to study the word of God for herself with an open heart to obey, to do whatever was necessary to follow Christ completely, and eventually the Holy Spirit persuades her to get out of this adulterous-but-happy second marriage.  She was able to eventually persuade Jim, which enabled a mutual consent petition and voluntary shared parenting arrangements.

Meanwhile, Jack has come to a very different place spiritually than when his bride was last willing to live with him.    He, too, has been absorbing God’s word, is relieved that Jill is no longer living in papered-over adultery, and it appears he hopes for reconciliation.      He is gentle in his efforts to woo Jill back, and hopefully, much is happening in prayer that the rest of us don’t see except in his manner.     If Jack became entangled during the years of estrangement, he too has become disentangled.  We don’t really know yet, and only God knows, whether Jack is ready spiritually to resume and sustain their union, non-covenant children in tow, under the same roof, but his heart appears open to growing his own discipleship.   He has publicly apologized to Jill and expressed regret for the emotional pain he caused her in their marriage.    All of this puts Jack and Jill light years ahead of most estranged Christian couples on the path to the kingdom of God, and is truly a cause for rejoicing even though reconciliation doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

Enter the blind guide:  Joe means well, but like all of us shepherdless sheep, is no less vulnerable to being controlled by emotions and scars.   Joe runs a local “house church” and a very large standers’ ministry.   Joe has been legally estranged from his covenant wife for a couple of decades, and would probably prefer not to be reconciled, for a variety of reasons.    He frankly wouldn’t have time for her if she did get out of her adulterous “remarriage”, and he routinely refers to her as his “ex”, neither cringing  nor voicing objections when countless other professing “Christians” do the same.   Brother Joe has undergone the further pain of being emotionally alienated by the actions of his wayward wife from his (now-grown) children and sadly hasn’t seen any of them, much less his grandchildren, in many years.    Joe now leads a vibrant “single” life which includes freedom, travel, financial autonomy, mission trips and several ministries.   He reasons that this is in keeping with much of the rest of what the Apostle Paul advocated in the 7th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians about kingdom of God fruitfulness from forsaking marriage altogether, if one is “not bound” to a wife.     He considers himself “single” rather than part of an unsevered one-flesh entity.    Joe devoted a recorded group teaching delivered to the rest of the large stander community about this issue, saying that verse 11,  gives estranged covenant spouses two “options”.   Says Joe, they are not required by scripture to reconcile.    It says right there in that verse, they can “remain unmarried”  – or -they can reconcile.

Is Joe right?   Or is he really just a Christ-robed “MGTOW*” ?
(*rightly-disgruntled “men going their own way”)

We’ll get the technical part of this discussion over with early, so that we can return to a robust discussion of submitted discipleship as a true follower of Christ.   One more thing needs to be said first:  every disciple needs a certain amount of judgment-free space to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling” once they do have the accurate scriptural facts–and unless there’s some strong indication that the brother or sister is acting in willful hypocrisy while knowing and rejecting the truth, they are entitled to the presumption of good faith in pursuit of God’s will and His truth.    Jill and Joe have much in common in many ways, and one of those ways is they are both in this particular good-faith “boat”.     Satan’s “no-fault” attack on marriage, and its horrible consequences in the church  has been a “doozie” from which it’s not been easy to recover, most of us would agree.

It should by now be no surprise to regular followers of “7 Times Around the Jericho Wall” blog to hear “standerinfamilycourt” remind that the answer to rightly dividing scriptures like 1 Corinthians 7:11 boils down to not taking any shortcuts in applying the 5 basic principles of sound hermeneutics:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison, and Consultation.    We have gone into great depth in previous blogs about applying the study technique, so this post will be a “cliff notes” revisit.   Despite anyone’s praying, fasting and seeking the Lord for their personal answer, after which they will “feel lead to…”,  SIFC is going to posit that someone who takes 1 Corinthians 7:11 as “two co-equal options” (remain chaste, be reconciled) has stopped superficially at Content, and didn’t really dig very deeply into that one.


(scripture4all.org  Greek Interlinear Text Tool.  Please click to enlarge.)

A couple of quick point-outs about the content of this scripture:

(1) it speaks of involuntary estrangement (choresthetai – literally, to “put distance between”, as the literal furrows in a plowed field), and is not a recognition of any validity for legal “dissolution” of the marriage.   Neither does it validate the reciprocation of that estrangement, which would be incompatible with Christ’s concept of one-flesh (sarx mia), and would excuse both spouses from their 1 Cor. 11:3 roles in the kingdom of God, with which the involuntary estrangement is interfering.    Most importantly, it prescribes a disciple’s gracious response to a circumstance that remains beyond their control.

(2) we must not overlook the importance of Paul beginning this instruction with utter clarity about Whose instruction (commandment) this is: But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife not leave her husband“.   (Some translations insert “should” here, but neither the text nor the parsing gives them any support for implying such permissiveness.)

(3) Nowhere in all of 1 Corinthians 7 does Paul ever address “divorced” people, or ever recognize man’s divorce as having any validity whatsoever.   He speaks of illicit legal proceedings in 1 Corinthian 6, but ceases to speak of it there.    Elsewhere, Paul tells us in no uncertain terms that God’s “divorce” is always spelled “D-E-A-T-H”.    If that were not so, Paul would be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

(With points 2 and 3 above, we have segued into the Context principle, which SIFC could take much further, but instead refers our readers to prior blogs.)   We simply say that the advocates of co-equal “options” in 1 Corinthians 7 really can’t go here, and don’t dare go here without corrupting or conflating who Paul was addressing in each section of this epistle.    When he speaks of the “unmarried” “being free of concern for a spouse” hindering them from the kingdom of God, he is not speaking of “dedetai”  but of “dedoulotai”.
Scripture consistency demands the understanding that the estranged covenant spouse is nevertheless “married”, in Paul’s parlance (and Christ’s).

We must remember that Paul got his instructions for marriage from spending three years of direct time with the resurrected Jesus, as he tell us in Galatians 1:

But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.  Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas (Peter)…”

When Paul says, “not I but the Lord”, this is a much stronger statement than if he’d merely been taught by the rest of the Apostles after his conversion, both by the amount of instruction time involved (equal to time spent by Christ with His disciples) and by the force with which he says it.    Any woman who leaves her husband permanently is in sin.   If she leaves him even temporarily for any reason short of physical safety, she is in sin.  She is actually rebelling against God’s sentence in Genesis 3:16, and its NT echo in 1 Corinthians 11:3.   This is as true of Jill as it is of Joe’s wife.    It is true even after she gets out of a faux “marriage” that, for however many years, has been masquerading as her true marriage.   Will this particular state of sin keep her out of heaven, or just reduce her rewards?  SIFC humbly submits that this depends on her heart being of the same hardness as the “unmerciful servant” of Matthew 18:23-35, and would strongly recommend gambling on the eternally safe side of that gamble (more about that below).

But who else is in sin?   Early church father Hermes tells us in a writing called “The Shepherd of Hermas”, of which there is documentary evidence that the Apostle’s disciples attributed the weight of scripture (in other words, conviction of Holy Spirit inspiration):

Mandate 4
1[29]:1 “I charge thee, “saith he, “to keep purity, and let not a thought enter into thy heart concerning another’s wife, or concerning fornication, or concerning any such like evil deeds; for in so doing thou commitest a great sin. But remember thine own wife always, and thou shalt never go wrong.
1[29]:2 For should this desire enter into thine heart, thou wilt go wrong, and should any other as evil as this, thou commitest sin. For this desire in a servant of God is a great sin; and if any man doeth this evil deed, he worketh out death for himself.
1[29]:3 Look to it therefore. Abstain from this desire; for, where holiness dwelleth, there lawlessness ought not to enter into the heart of a righteous man.”
1[29]:4 I say to him, “Sir, permit me to ask thee a few more questions” “Say on,” saith he. “Sir,” say I, “if a man who has a wife that is faithful in the Lord detect her in adultery, doth the husband sin in living with her?”
1[29]:5 “So long as he is ignorant,” saith he, “he sinneth not; but if the husband know of her sin, and the wife repent not, but continue in her fornication, and her husband live with her, he makes himself responsible for her sin and an accomplice in her adultery.”
1[29]:6 “What then, Sir,” say I, “shall the husband do, if the wife continue in this case?” “Let him divorce(*) her,” saith he, “and let the husband abide alone: but if after divorcing (*) his wife he shall marry another, he likewise committeth adultery.”
1[29]:7 “If then, Sir,” say I, “after the wife is divorced (*), she repent and desire to return to her own husband, shall she not be received?”
1[29]:8 “Certainly,” saith he, “if the husband receiveth her not, he sinneth and bringeth great sin upon himself; nay, one who hath sinned and repented must be received, yet not often; for there is but one repentance for the servants of God. For the sake of her repentance therefore the husband ought not to marry. This is the manner of acting enjoined on husband and wife.
1[29]:9 Not only,” saith he, “is it adultery, if a man pollute his flesh, but whosoever doeth things like unto the heathen committeth adultery. If therefore in such deeds as these likewise a man continue and repent not, keep away from him, and live not with him. Otherwise, thou also art a partaker of his sin.
1[29]:10 For this cause ye were enjoined to remain single, whether husband or wife; for in such cases repentance is possible.

[   SIFC:  (*) This translation of The Shepherd uses the words “put away” (or, send away) instead of “divorce”, and here is the original Greek text

where the word “apoluo” was used (literally meaning: “from-loose”) which most of the early church fathers considered a separation only from “bed and board”- not necessarily a legal dissolution, though Hermes’ writing indeed indicates that Roman law, similar to today’s “condonation” provisions in some U.S. states, may have immorally required this in order to legally exonerate the husband from presumptions of “complicity”.]    This distinction is important because it helps establish that the disciples’ disciples such as Hermes only recognized legal divorce as a man-made contrivance, and (like Jesus) didn’t really hold that it dissolved the actual union.   

 Note, however, that Hermes specifically charged one-flesh spouses with the duty of care over each other’s souls, and so portrays the Holy Spirit as commanding reconciliation consistent with no-excuses indissolubility, so far as it depends upon us.      This would be consistent with the sharp warning Jesus gave in Matthew 18:23-35, also with 2 Corinthians 5:18 and Romans 12:17-19, as well as with 1 Corinthians 7:2-3.    Some who can’t presently bring themselves to obey in this area will try to call this idea that reconciliation is mandatory, “legalism”.   “standerinfamilycourt” appreciates Leonard Ravenhill’s take on legalism, and would suggest taking great care before obedience to an apparent heaven-or-hell commandment is dismissed by a Christ-follower as “legalism”, even though many contemporary “Christians” do so almost reflexively.

“standerinfamilycourt”  personally admits accepting this commandment reluctantly, since a returned spouse in this instance means one who is likely to come back to a financially and emotionally stable household with shattered health and finances, not to even mention a mountain of debt trailing behind as one more evidence of God’s merciful attempt to change their “free will”.    (The Prodigal Son came back home with the stench of hog manure on him and still was draped with his father’s best robe before finding a bathtub.)  Cherished activities and ministries may have to be given up with little or no notice to others.   Oh that Paul had left us with two equally moral options, of which we could “opt” to fulfill the easier of the two!  But a repenting spouse who dies in his or her sins because we refused to lay down our lives the way Jesus did, is infinitely and eternally worse for us, as the prodigal’s “other half”.    Let such a thing as allowing a prodigal to die in their sin be God’s decision, never SIFC’s!

With this last bit of discussion, we’ve just applied three more principles of sound hermeneutics to 1 Corinthians 7:11 – remain chaste or be reconciled:  Culture, Comparison and Consultation.

As readers might imagine, there is a real Jill and a real Jack in the online marriage permanence community.   One of them appears to be earnestly seeking to reconcile and the other has been making some powerful YouTube videos that have raised some of these questions about reconciliation.    The reconciliation-seeker goes so far as to comment about their intentions on their one-flesh’s YouTube posts, apologizing for what happened.   May God protect this pair from satan’s interference until His full will is done.    Both spouses may be “newbies” when it comes to all the implications of the indissolubility of holy matrimony.   At least one of the spouses makes clear that they need additional time and space to process all that repentance entails, and SIFC would agree they deserve it, so long as their true heart is to obey.    The reluctant spouse is also considering the feelings of the children born into the noncovenant “marriage”, perhaps very wisely, though obedience to Christ usually resolves such matters in due time.   Certainly it is prudent for the reluctant spouse to not act in a way that would mislead the children to believe that getting out of the noncovenant union with their other parent was being done for reasons the world (and worldly church) would regard as “adulterous”.      That spouse has asserted the voice of the Holy Spirit in “not being told to reconcile”.    It is not wrong to aspire to be Spirit-led, but we should remember that the person of the Holy Spirit never leads in contradiction to scripture, even where scripture’s application has been obscured by contemporary culture.    (To round out the discussion, SIFC also notes the previous posts addressing some Anabaptist sects who (for other reasons) falsely teach that reconciliation with the spouse of our youth after repenting of an adulterous noncovenant “marriage” is actually “sinful”.)

In Dr. Eggerson’s classic Christian book,  “Love and Respect”, he echoes the marriage instructions of Peter and Paul  in commanding the husband to love his wife, but commanding the wife to respect her husband.    A husband who effectively “writes off” the soul of his prodigal wife (and sometimes their children) after “remarriage”, by treating the instructions to remain chaste or be reconciled as “either / or” options at his own choosing,  does not love her the way Hosea loved Gomer, nor the way Paul describes in Ephesians 5.     As a result, he is directly contributing to her disrespect and continued prodigal state, and probably her perception of him as a “hypocrite”, since he’s wearing Christ as a large badge, but not modeling Christ toward her very well.    The wife who refuses a repenting husband his God-assigned role of her “head”, does not respect him, and by extension, does not respect Christ in him or over him.   In time, her one-flesh husband will revert to a lack of sacrificial love.

About the gamble, mentioned above, between “loss of rewards” and loss of eternal soul.    Will street ministry, group teaching calls, YouTube videos on marriage permanence make up for letting our one-flesh spouse’s soul go uncared for as a result of exercising this “option”?

 According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it.For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. 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.
– 1 Corinthians 3:10-16

We can’t take our ministry materials through this fire and expect them to survive, obviously.    We can only take the souls we influenced correctly by those materials through the fire.    SIFC would suggest that if we guess wrong here, by virtue of having produced those materials, there won’t be any souls to present.   If Christ’s warnings elsewhere concerning heaven-or-hell issues, like authentic forgiveness, and discipleship through imitating Him by laying down our lives are true without exceptions, there won’t even be a pass at that fire that tests our works.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’

For these strong reasons, it is wrong, selfish and rebellious against the kingdom of God to treat 1 Corinthians 7:11 as presenting two equally-acceptable “stand-alone” options, rather than as dependent commandments (“A”, if not “B”).   It should be clear from all of Paul’s other instructions that he wrote this instruction with a preference for “both / and” (not “either / or”).    After all, reversing the logic and supposing that Jill had left Jack for the “abuse” of having come to Christ, and Jack had remarried, would simply reconciling with Jill absolve Jack from the need to confess his adulterous, noncovenant union as sin and forsake it forever?    Of course not!

Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
– 2 Corinthians 2:8-11

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

Miami Megachurch Had Covenant Wife Literally Arrested for “Standing”

by Standerinfamilycourt

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” – Matt. 5:11-12

The covenant marriage “stander” community has its leaders who organize weekly conference calls where testimonies and other encouragements are offered to those who are believing God to pull their prodigal spouse out of an adulterous state-sanctioned (perhaps, even church-“sanctified”) but God-forbidden “remarriage”, thereby restoring justified, regenerated souls to the kingdom of God once the sin is confessed as sin, and renounced by the penitent prodigal spouse.   This, of course, is the only “biblical grounds for (man’s) divorce” that has ever existed, from the beginning.    In all such cases, the biblical ground is based on the fact that God has never created a one-flesh (Greek: sarx mia) entity due to the undissolved prior covenant and unlawful nature of the union.    This is why Jesus consistently and repeatedly calls such legalized unions where there is a living, estranged true spouse adultery — not so much for moral reasons, but actually for metaphysical reasons, and because a holy God cannot and will not ever covenant with sin.  The word of God is crystal clear that only physical death, not man’s paper, dissolves original God-joined holy matrimony unions between a widowed or never-married man and a widowed or never-married woman.

These online groups are so vital to this marriage permanence community because standers, and those who do exit their papered-over adulterous “marriages” in Spirit-led repentance, can often find themselves subject to intense persecution, some of the most vicious of which is at the hands of other so-called “Christians”, and inexcusably, sometimes by churches that have some scurrilous reason to aid and abet an adulterous legalized union.  Such was the riveting testimony of Tracy Jordan in a recent conference call – link to the May, 2019 audio replay is here.   Listening to the audio is strongly encouraged for readers who have the time, as there are details and drama of the story not highlighted in this post.

Tracy relates on the call that she was five years into her first covenant marriage when her husband began a pattern of infidelity, and that there had been a generational legacy of divorce in her birth family.   She married her husband in 2000 after several years of cohabiting, and was happy that he would be the sole-provider and she a homemaker after the biblical model.   She was concerned about the curse of the family legacy of fragmentation, and hoped that this marriage would be until death.    When her husband asked her for a divorce after a few years of standing for her adultery-embattled marriage, she refused to sign the papers, and started going to church on her own.    She then found out that her husband had applied to become a deacon in a Miami megachurch at the same time he was in the process of unilaterally divorcing her, under Florida’s family-hostile “no-fault” law, in order to continue and cover up his ongoing adultery with a member of that church.

Tracy made an appointment with the leadership of the church who had made her estranged husband a deacon, Tracy following the biblical model for addressing sin in the body of Christ, and Paul’s guidelines concerning the qualifications for church leadership.    She was not allowed to see the head pastor, but was granted an appointment with an assistant pastor.     When she arrived at the church for the appointment, she found her husband and his adulteress in the assistant pastor’s office, and as she was soon about to violently find out, they had, perhaps without the head pastor’s knowledge, pre-arranged for a police squad car to pull up out front of the church.   Also in the office were two church security goons, at the ready.    Tracy pleaded scripture to the assembled group, warning of the sin of this church in facilitating the planned adulterous nuptials between this pair, quoting Mark 10:11-12 and Romans 7:2-3.   She says she was then seized by church security and bodily thrown to the ground outside.   The waiting police then arrested her, charging her with “simple battery” because she had tried to push the church security guards away, telling them, “don’t touch me!”    Not only was the assistant pastor guilty of collusion with the adulterous pair and the police, but the police were guilty of collusion in being eyewitnesses to the unprovoked assault by the security guards, in basically “reversing the charges”.

Tracy writes this in a  Sept 2016 post:

“I commend you once again sister Henry.. (addressing an author and leader in the marriage permanence community who left an adulterous remarriage of 17 years, Sharon L. Fitzhenry)… for your stand and dedication on this critical issue of marriage, divorce and remarriage. I was arrested a couple of years ago in church here in Miami, because my husband divorced me and married another woman in the church.

“I confronted the Leadership with Matthew 19:9, during a bible study lesson and there was a uproar in the congregation with me being arressted.   I would have done the same thing over again, because it wasn’t like I was John the Baptist, going to be beheaded!  I was with my husband for 19 years before he divorced me. I tried to fight for my husband’s soul, because I didn’t commit adultery, and I knew what state that would put him in.    A lost state! he had no biblical right to divorce me.  The church, cosigned, condoned and contributed to adultery. After the drama was over, I moved forward with my children, unfortunately two years later, my husband developed lung cancer and died. He died in his sins!

“God took one Rib! not spare Ribs! No man should divorce his wife, because she gained two pounds or burned the chicken last night!  My husband was a deacon of the church! I warn those that teach this damnable Doctrine, because many souls will be lost because of it. Marriage is a Covenant, not a Contract!
It’s until her last breath or yours!

“I didn’t make the rules, I just follow them.  A pastor told me that there was no such thing as an adulterous marriage.  Once you remarry, the second time, God honors that marriage. That’s not what the Bible teaches! As far as divorce and reconciliation to your first marriage partner, we find in Jeremiah 3:8, that God divorced faithless Israel and gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away, because of her adulteries, but God reconciled himself back to Israel, once she repented! The story of Hosea and Gomer, depicts God’s undying love for Israel. Hosea was God! God was married to Israel! As husband’s and wives, we need to love like that. We need to forgive like that. We need to drag the hurts we have been harboring against each other in our hearts to the cross of Christ- it’s where we lay our burdens of guilt and shame. Only in him will we find true forgiveness. When we fully forgive each other , our minds will be released from the bondage of resentment that has been building a wall between us, and we shall be free to grow in our relationship with each other as husband and wife in holy matrimony!”

Covenant marriage standers bear many sorrows, but the loss of their one-flesh’s eternal soul to death before repentance (with the full complicity of a harlot church) has to be the very worst of these.   Every stander living under the crushing burden of an unreconciled marriage and family dreads this occurrence beyond anything else.   Many have this burden lifted by the return of their prodigal home to the Lord and to the home in this life, sometimes after decades of running away from Him.   A tragic few do not.   Tracy’s husband died in his adulterous remarriage only a few years after entering it.

Tracy relates on the conference call that she was eventually exonerated and acquitted of the criminal complaint after a trial that went on for eight months, and which depleted her financial resources.    This is the all-too-common lot for an innocent spouse who dares to seek any kind of justice for what modern “family laws” routinely inflict on them by giving preference to the offending spouse, and subjugating the fundamental rights of the non-offending spouse.  
In too many such cases, the innocent spouse is punished by both civil and criminal laws, though they’ve done nothing morally wrong.   Tracy relates that she was ultimately unsuccessful in recovering civil damages for the false arrest because one of the officers subsequently went to prison for an unrelated matter.    She eventually received an apology from the head pastor of this church that conspired to have her arrested.

Tracy is now married to a biblically-eligible man, but at an unthinkable, staggering eternal loss, following the untimely, unrepentant death of her first husband.    Today Tracy is a grandmother, and she works as a volunteer in a shelter for abused women in Florida.

And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
– 2 Timothy 3:12

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

What Happened When a Covenant Marriage Stander Wrote His State Legislators About Forced Divorce

by  Guest Blogger, Billy Miller of Louisiana

In 2013 I sent the following email to every Louisiana legislator, and some statewide leaders. I did not get one reply.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

While you are at work your wife could file for divorce, get a Protective Order based on her word that she is afraid of you, and you couldn’t get into your own house…not even get some clothes, shave kit, etc., and you would have to sleep somewhere else tonight.

That is divorce according to current law. Staying apart for just 6 months would guarantee her a divorce, and that is when you would start paying for something you didn’t even want…the divorce.

You wouldn’t hear any charges against you and proof of guilt, no defense because there aren’t any charges, and no way to appeal the judge saying “Divorce granted”…because there is no Case to appeal.

Now you see why I am an Advocate for Divorce Reform…fighting our ILLEGAL laws…that make you “like it or lump it” in divorce.

The lawyers in 1969 in California who came up with the current No-Fault divorce laws were told by an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court was present and told them that what they were doing was illegal, and they did it anyway.

Louisiana has had these illegal laws on the books for 40 years, destroying marriages and families…ILLEGALLY. These same laws are in effect in all 50 states.

I hope that concerns you IMMENSELY, and that you will initiate actions to put a stop to these ILLEGAL laws.

(  SIFC:   Billy Miller is a Baptist pastor, family patriarch, covenant marriage stander and family law reform activist who lives in Louisiana.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

#RuthSummit 2019 – How Did It Go?

by Standerinfamilycourt

For by wise counsel you will wage your own war,
And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.
– Proverbs  24:6

As soon as the speaker list was released, this blogger knew that this conference was simply not to be missed, come hell or high water (SIFC literally experienced a little of both before arriving there, but that’s a story for another day).    “Standerinfamilycourt” has always had the greatest respect and admiration for its sponsor, The Ruth Institute.   Many of the scheduled speakers have long been personal heroes (and heroines).   The trip to Lake Charles is easily 15 hours each way by car, but that was no obstacle.    This will by no means be a post about “buyer’s remorse”.   There is no question that some very important connections were made at the Summit, and much cross-awareness “landed” for the participants, SIFC included.

And, there’s no question that what transpired in that venue absolutely fulfilled the objectives for the gathering that the Ruth Institute promised in the promotional information…

“Discover why the Church has been right all along about marriage, family, and sexual morality!
Stories from:
  • Children of Divorce
  • Abandoned Spouses
  • Children of Same-Sex Parents
  • Refugees from the Gay Lifestyle
Learn what it’s costing: in child trauma, clergy sex abuse scandals, runaway government power, and more.”

 

But…a day after returning, some of us were still feeling the effects of a few unmet hopes, including the action-oriented hope that it would be considerably more “shirt-sleeves” and interactive in its format, at least for the sessions involving “activist” panels.    Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was careful to explain to participants that The Ruth Institute is not a lobbying organization (according to IRS rules for 501c3 and 501c4 educational organizations, TRI being the former).    However, the distinction seems to be more philosophical than strictly legal in how “Ruth” defines her mission and organizes the organization’s engagement with issues and social change.   For example, according to the website:

“In the summer of 2013, the Supreme Court’s decisions in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases signaled a new level of governmental commitment to the Sexual Revolution. Dr. Morse and the team at the Ruth Institute concluded that the opponents of natural marriage hold a commanding position on the legal and political fronts.  At that time, the Ruth Institute made a strategic decision to enter into the cultural and social fray in a new way.

“With Ruth’s renewed focus on the social and cultural arenas (as opposed to the political and legal arenas)…”

Tidy strategy, this is: hoping to drive culture change in order to ultimately reform the vicious “teacher” that this law has become —except that, all the signs of the times ( for example, 70 years elapsed since Israel’s re-establishment as a nation, the emergence in Europe of mandatory RFID chipping of corporate employees,  Russia’s renewed aggression, Trump’s  move of  the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple)  ….seem to point to the Lord returning and rapturing away His church long before such a strategy might ever come to fruition, after which, the bible tell us the influence of the Holy Spirit will be removed from society remaining on earth, and the Antichrist will have a brief reign that will make all of this moral concern seem wildly irrelevant anyway.    Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the U.S. has already been “given over”, as described in Romans 1 because heterosexual moral reform has been rejected, especially in the church, long before the Windsor / Perry / Obergefell decisions of 2013-2015.    Those of us who are impatient about the timeline of family law reform are impatient mostly because the souls of loved ones remain in serious jeopardy in the meantime.    Some of us want the drag queen fired as “teacher” yesterday, and a morally worthy role model hired in “her” place  for the sake of our kids and grandkids.  No society in all of recorded history has survived more than 3 or 4 generations in the utterly bankrupt moral climate we have now, almost all of it driven by nefarious family laws and institutional acquiescence to them.

What’s largely forgotten in that 2013 strategic thought process at TRI is the need to change not one, but two grossly sinful cultures that sprang from the Sexual Revolution, the sodomy-as-“marriage” culture, and the sequential-polygamy-as-“marriage” culture (still seen by most in Christendom as what TRI refers to above as “natural marriage”).   As our friend, Pastor Jack Shannon pointed out in his 2017 book, Contra Mundum Swagger, those heavily invested in the second culture (relying on either RCC “annulment” or evangelical hypergrace) tend to see the first culture as befalling them from out of nowhere, and by no fault (pun not intended) of their own, seeing it fatalistically as a “test” or “cross to bear” rather than as an immediate call to individual and collective repentance.     It was not lawful for Herod to have Herodias, his (living) BROTHER’S wife, and a man of God gave up his own saved life to warn their souls.  It is no more lawful today for a few of these repeal movement leaders to have their current mates, while SIFC has not shrunk back from warning them in various ways (and is probably not on the short list of suitable conference speakers for that reason alone).

The Lord may not continue to forbear for two or three more decades for culture to change, under a strategy of incremental influence, in order “ease into” legal reforms.   It might be different if we were not citizens of a constitutional republic that His extreme favor gave us in the first place, and which we are now basically squandering  when we fear reprisal, or fear suffering persecution and loss of comforts – steep costs that the early church joyfully bore in order to introduce the world to true Christian morality, though they had little or no formal voice to the Graeco-Roman government systems at all.
For anyone, with both a representative vote and a state of living estranged from their true, God-joined spouse, to compare a reticent approach toward contemporary government engagement with the example set by the early church is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Wrote Anglican church historian Kenneth E. Kirk in the 1940’s:

“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals?  Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage.   Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?

“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”

(Marriage and Divorce. 2nd ed. London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.,1948)

For the action-oriented participants (who would like to stay God’s hand in the timing of His finalized judgment), important collaboration items had to be relegated to the conference breaks, such as asking Fr. / Dr. Sullins how one might get important outdated research refreshed, or undertake a child-outcome study for a sociological group that has never been addressed before (children of biblical standers being segregated out from those of generic and incomparable “single parents” because the former are likely skewing that measure by their growing numbers and superior child outcomes from walking out biblical principles in the home).

Perhaps there’s no avoiding the fact that panelists addressing the hydra-headed issue of what’s being done to reform unilateral no-fault divorce laws (and resulting injustices) would have a more difficult time being brief enough to allow feedback and interaction afterwards in a uniform allotted time slot, which was 30 minutes total.    This seemed to be less of a problem with the personal testimony panels where there was ample time for some follow-up, in most cases.    As it turned out, there was no time for such in the “activist” panel led by Matthew Johnston, Jeff Morgan and Christopher Brennan  (~47 minutes into this link).  The personal testimonies, while significant and powerful, mostly represent the symptoms of the disease, while the “activist panel” (in effect) represents a proposal for the surgical approach to excising the disease that is causing the cascade of symptoms.     Yes, this does involve a process for influencing policy and legislation to some extent, but the IRS has given 501(c)3’s a little bit of leeway for potential indirect involvement in this:

501(c)(3) organizations ARE allowed to take part in small amounts of political lobbying. There are two ways to determine how much nonprofits can legally lobby: 1) Insubstantial Part Test and, 2) Expenditure Test. In the first option, an organization’s lobbying activities cannot constitute a substantial part of the organization’s total activities and expenditures in any tax year. This option is somewhat vague, as it does not define “lobbying activities,” “substantial amount,” or how that amount will be calculated. The second option is somewhat clearer. The Expenditure Test defines permissible lobbying activities and measures an 501(c)(3)’s lobbying activities only by the amount of money spent on lobbying activities.

Surely, providing an annual venue for meaningful strategy development, and possible nonprofit mentoring (or incubation) for an allied-but-separate non-profit that could take a more activist role which complements TRI’s core strategic mission would not get TRI into any difficulty with the IRS, nor divert significant resources from “Ruth’s” preferred core activities.   The fact that TRI awarded an “Activist” recognition this year is a good demonstration of that point.   Quite often, when a problem seems complex and intractable, effective solutions are “both / and” rather than “either / or”,  meaning that involved organizations can certainly specialize where they feel their strengths are, while maintaining supportive ties with other organizations whose strengths may be complementary but not duplicative.

Perhaps some time allowance is necessary for “ice-breaking” when diverse allied interests and players (who started out not knowing each other very well) begin coming together for the first time, but the road home from this conference felt as though an untamed “adhocracy” will continue to be aimed in 2019-20 at the political realm, rather than a purposeful coordination of collaborating efforts based on experiences shared, and consensus-finding.   This seemed like a sad waste of the rare and valuable face-to-face time we were afforded in Lake Charles.   Hopefully, some of this occurred at the smaller dinners that were organized for the invited speakers outside the formal agenda.    From SIFC’s seat, it appeared that some panelists were not in consensus with each other about specifics of the way forward.    When the other side plays dirty (as we know they do), one option indeed is to wait until conditions are more favorable before ever engaging, another is to peck away randomly which isn’t likely to be very successful, and the third way is to go after them with a solid, coordinated and well-vetted battle plan that takes into account a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that is updated at least annually.    One possible solution for the next conference might be some breakout time by interest area.

We all tend to come to these events with a few individualized sub-agendas, in addition to the main agenda items.    SIFC is the first to admit that what will be gleaned from this year’s Summit participation and deemed most valuable is steps to meaningful reform that will come sooner rather than later, and divert that many more precious souls from hell (at least, on account of dying while in a sinful subsequent union).   Another sub-agenda, for somebody else, might be gleaning whatever will most quickly lessen parental alienation or reduce onerous child support payments.   Some standers in the room might prefer for divorce to remain cheap, easy and certain so that their prodigal spouse has an easier path to repentance some day.   Some individuals will be looking to make or continue a livelihood from the reform effort.   These things will, of course, cause some differences in preferred approach and timeline to reform.     Possibly, a sub-agenda for the Summit sponsors is to be inclusive of non-Catholics while not doing anything that might unnecessarily alienate the material support of RCC hierarchy for the organization’s efforts and vision.   Can a mutually-supportable action path be found through all these sub-agendas?   Possibly, but not if insufficient interactive discussion time is allotted among key stakeholders in the program agenda!    This is the first major conference in recent memory attended by SIFC  where some sort of general participant evaluation feedback was not requested.

It did not take long for word to get out among the covenant marriage stander community of this #RuthSummit, and of the livestream video resources that Family Research Council staffers so generously provided.  “Standerinfamilycourt” awoke to an email from a male leader in the movement Tuesday morning, sharing that another abandoned, standing husband had emailed most of the faithful pastors in the movement, and several other standers.   This young husband who originated the email chain had been texting me on Friday, eager to get to the livestreaming links before the opening dinner got underway.    All of this is truly a blessing to that large community, who has (admittedly) mixed views on the actual repeal of unilateral, no-fault divorce laws and the biblically-appropriate level government engagement by Christ-followers.

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to wrap up this post by giving a hearty “thumbs-up” to a few points in the long list of positives from #RuthSummit 2019 over this past weekend:

1.) Auspicious, God-orchestrated timing:  As we sat at dinner Friday night, while Texas activist Jeff Morgan was receiving TRI’s award as “Activist of the Year”,  SIFC received a text on the cell phone:    Both HB922 and HB926 had been scheduled for their committee hearings on only 2 business days’ notice.    SIFC is “sure” there was no mal-intent with this timing, which is “done all the time”, we hear.    Little did House committee chairman Harold Dutton know that his maneuver increased the joy of the evening, as the veritable who’s who of activists in were in the same room to receive the news while gathered over dinner.   This would include Dr. Morse, Leila Miller, Matthew Johnston, Chris Brennan, blogger Kristi Davis, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, and new repeal enthusiast Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon.     Just picture the phones ringing off the hook in Austin all day today and tomorrow, and the prayers going up for some of these folks who will be there in Austin testifying tomorrow at 10:30 local time.
The timing actually helped increase the chances that if both bills fail against the very long odds of getting to the House floor for a timely vote, there will at least be solid backing for simultaneously introducing them in both chambers (with needed improvements) in 2021, next legislative session.   The Lord works in mysterious ways. – praise Him!

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
– Gen. 50:20

Dear Readers, here is the list of committee members and their contact information.

ACTION REQUEST: Would you consider being a part of history-making and giving each of these committee members a timely call, asking them to support both bills? You do not necessarily have to be from Texas to weigh in, but if you are from Texas, and either you or somebody you know from Texas has a restored marriage after a Texas “no-fault” divorce, this will be very important information to leave with the staffer when you call, in order to deliver a strong message that “insupportability” is nothing more than a subjective legal fiction on which no law depriving citizens of their parental or property rights should be based in a constitutional republic.

A key tidbit about Mr. Dutton, the committee chairman:  he went through a messy divorce in the 1990’s.   Among other traumas from his own divorce, he experienced the horror of having his wife’s live-in boyfriend physically abuse his sons without being able to do anything about it, like many other young men who are subjected to forced divorce. If the situation is that he did not actually initiate his divorce (almost a 70% chance), this could provide something to widen his perspective a bit.

The current legislative session in Texas adjourns for two years at the end of May.    If you are interested in watching tomorrow’s proceedings live tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1, try this link (no promises they will actually have it on camera, but there’s a chance).   Alternatively, it’s likely Jeff Morgan will be videoing capturing the testimony for upload to you his youtube channel as he did two years ago.

UPDATE:  Testimony on the bill to repeal one spouse’s subjective and unsubstantiated declaration of  “insupportability” as a ground for divorce in Texas was heard on May 2, 2019.   On May 3, the bill failed to achieve the necessary votes in the Democrat-dominated Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee to move on to the Calendar Committee, despite having done so two years earlier, and despite dozens of covenant marriage standers calling these committee members’ offices in support of HB 922.   It will now have to be introduced again into the 87th legislative session in 2021.

2.) Wonderful connections with another strong group of Catholic standers was forged:  We already have solid connections with Catholic standers through Bai MacFarlane’s wonderful ministry, Mary’s Advocates.    SIFC learned at the Summit that Covenant Keepers has been working closely with a well-established group of Louisiana standers who have formed a weekly group locally called “Hosea’s Hope” (no apparent online presence).    These standers shared another tidbit of good news:  it appears that Covenant Keepers has worked recently to cleanse its local group leadership of adulterously remarried leaders, which would be an update on our earlier reporting, if confirmed.

3. )  The value that covenant marriage standers bring to the effort to save biblical marriage was publicly recognized at the Summit.   Dr. Morse asked all the standers in the room to “stand” right after the panel on marital abandonment spoke.   We were able then to identify each other, perhaps half a dozen people.    Hard copies of this recent blog post , “7 Important Contributions Covenant Standers Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce” were brought to the conference for handouts, and Dr. Morse very graciously gave us impromptu table space in the venue.   She told the invited stander speakers, “when the history is written that this ship got turned around, y’all are going to be mentioned…”     This was said in front of some of the most important Christian scholars we have today by one of the most important Christian scholars we have today, and it went out over the Family Research Council media machine.    It was a mighty proud moment for standers everywhere.    Dr. Baskerville gets a lot of feedback from the (justifiably) angry MGTOW crowd (“men going their own way”).    It must have been refreshing to hear for once about grace-filled men and women going GOD’s way under the same profoundly unjust circumstances.

4.) Dr. Baskerville hit yet another one “out of the ballpark” (opening wide the eyes of some very influential people).    These were the exact words of a stunned Dr.  Gagnon on his Facebook wall after hearing Stephen Baskerville’s riveting 40-minute address:

“Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of government at Patrick Henry College, hitting his critique of “No Fault Divorce” out of the ballpark. It is one of the most anti-constitutional measures imaginable, incentivizing family break ups, rejecting basic standards of justice, and giving the state unlimited tyranny…”

Most serious standers who follow our pages were not surprised by this at all, since it is quite customary for the blunt Dr. B to hit things out of the ballpark every time the mic is on.   That said, there is a famous moment in the movie, “Amazing Grace” where MP William Wilberforce has conspired with the head of the Tories to take one well-heeled set on a party-barge tour of the harbor, complete with powdered wigs, wine, hors-d’oeuvres, and a string quartet.   SIFC could go on to describe the proceedings, but it would be more fun to just let the readers watch it instead, while emphasizing that in no way are any Summit leaders or participants being compared with the insensitive lot in the movie, but the “turning point” feel of that moment is still quite similar indeed.   Picture Dr. Baskerville on the bridge of the sailing vessel that carried the slaves – not hard, is it?

5.) The language of the thought leaders in the room appeared to be slowly changing for the better (and root causation finally being acknowledged out loud).     Dr. Gagnon also gave an excellent address Saturday afternoon.   Although it was (by title) about homosexualist twisting of the scripture, he had a lot to say about holy matrimony.  Across several of the speakers, we started hearing a bit less about the looser “standard” of “permanence”, and considerably more about the far more demanding state of indissolubility that Christ laid out.   Desirably, we also started to hear a lot about the one-flesh state, notably at ~ 11:55 in Dr. Gagnon’s address, when he says this about the one-flesh state (echoing Paul in Ephesians 5):  “…so whatever you do to your spouse, if it’s a negative thing, it’s a self-inflicted wound.”   And again, at ~ 21:30, and at ~40:00 where Dr. G comes oh-so-close to appropriately recognizing the instantaneous, supernatural, metaphysical nature of the God-joining that is the very Creational basis for indissolubility, and for “remarriage” while an original spouse still lives, constituting papered-over adultery 100% of the time.    It’s not the repeated physical uniting that creates the one-flesh state, according to Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 and Paul in Ephesians 5:31, it’s God’s actual hand in the wedding itself that permanently does so.   If this were properly acknowledged, the witness against homosexual “marriage” (and practice) would become so much more powerful than any attempts to “rank” soul-corroding sexual sin.

At ~ 18:00: “When Jesus talked about marriage in Matthew 19 as being indissoluble, permanent, lifelong…a vision largely lost by the church, which is the beginning of our problems.   We would never be at this place on the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism if we hadn’t already lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage…if we had not caved on those issues, we would not have come to this extreme point, and we are at an extreme point now.”  
(SIFC must still respectfully disagree with any attempt articulated between 22:00 and 40:00  to claim that one sexual sin is “worse” than another, when Paul said this in 1 Cor. 6:18-20,  about heterosexual defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and warned at least twice, “do not be deceived” :  both receive the same eternal outcome if unrepented, we’ve lived to see that both equally undermine the biblical family, hence entire societies, sending the unrepentant to hell in both cases.  SIFC believes such a philosophy is a large part of the reason we “lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage”, as Dr. Gagnon had earlier put it.)

We believe it’s the patient, continued voice of the scholar-standers who are respectfully challenging the comfortable presumptions of the more conventional and acclaimed scholars and bringing about this necessary evolution in the latter.

6.)  There also seemed to be a “lessons-learned” readiness to jettison the unhelpful idea of 5 years ago, that the sexuality debates can leave God out and prevail.   The best indication of this maturation, of course, is the theme for the Summit: “Why the Church’s Teaching Was Right All Along” (that is, “right all along” if you ignore the 12th century fabrication of “annulment” doctrine under Pope Innocent III, and you also ignore Luther’s humanistic 16th century innovations.)   The absurdity of this notion should have been obvious on its face in 2013:   “we battle not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and dark forces in the heavenly realm.”

7.) Satan so feared the impact of the #RuthSummit livestreaming result that he felt compelled to harass the Family Research Council technicians on both days.    Thankfully, the Holy Spirit was invited in both days in prayers to open and close the sessions.  Organizing this kind of an event around a controversial topic that brings together people of different faiths, but the same biblical truth, is never as easy as it looks.   This one came off very well, and was an endless encouragement to thousands of covenant marriage standers around the world who were not able to attend, but wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

We are looking forward to next year already!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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