by Standerinfamilycourt
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. – 1 John 4:1
The moment a blogger attempts to rescue perishing souls and dares to connect the cultural soul-poison of remarriage adultery with its biblical eternal outcome (“do not be deceived, no adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God” – 1 Cor. 6:9), it amounts to nothing less than kicking satan’s hornet nest in mid-summer. Trust us, satan fights hard to control and manipulate those souls – often doing so by fear of doom!
Once hardened to the straightforward protests because the focus is unwaveringly on souls, the evil one will regroup to bring on challenges that also attempt to challenge our compassion here at
“7 Times Around the Jericho Wall.” A couple of those potent challenges can be seen in the comments to one blog post from about a year ago:
“HOW DO I KNOW WHETHER GOD JOINED MY FIRST MARRIAGE?”
Typically, the person bringing the challenge truly does have circumstances where there are enormous, and even dire barriers to ceasing to cohabit with a faux spouse as a necessary element of true repentance. In other situations, the person is merely impersonating such a person in a truly sick attempt to discredit God’s word, and to discredit any such ministry by challenging the compassion of both. From where this blogger sits, discerning between these types of encounters doesn’t always come easy – and we’ve been at this for almost seven years now.
In this post, some of the common characteristics of this kind of challenge will first be explored, for discernment purposes.
Then, a few generic, practical suggestions for this sort of impossible situation will be at least offered – which may or may not “land” well, depending upon one’s true heart condition. We shall then finish off by connecting the advice in this post with the new geopolitical reality that landed on January 20, 2021 in the United States.
Characteristics of a typical “compassion” challenger (in no particular order):
(1) they insist they have no options to physically exit an illicit living arrangement (no money, no health, no friends, no relations, can’t afford a lawyer, noncovenant dependent children, etc.)
(2) they are persistent if they don’t get the answer from this blog site that they hoped for, making repetitive arguments numerous times.
(3) their inquiry typically makes apparent that they haven’t read the blog post they are challenging, or its related links very thoroughly.
(4) they insist they have been praying about their situation for quite some time, and God has been silent, so they need an urgent answer from us. They openly assert that they expect us to peer into their heart and speak for God, or the consequences will be dire for them.
(5) they often assert that they are living celibate in their faux marriage in a distant part of the adulterous home. (What could be the harm in that?)
The more of these elements that are present in an inquiry, especially a redundant (“but you don’t understand my circumstances”) inquiry, the greater the suspicion that we’re really dealing with an impersonator – one of the demonic individuals bent on countering the movement who is quite deft in taking on various personas, and has many years practice at it. Within reason, we always seek to be open in the blog comments to earnest questions, but the days do grow short, our extensive blogsite is keyword-searchable, and any expectation that we will be such bad time stewards as to regurgitate a previous blog post in response to an individual inquiry comment is (frankly) badly misplaced.
Practical Suggestions for Exiting Immoral Cohabitation When Resources Are Limited
When it comes to adulterous remarriages, unilateral, “no-fault” divorce, while profoundly unconstitutional, can be a good thing. Unless one happens to live in the state of Mississippi, nobody living in the U.S. can legitimately argue that they “can’t” get a relatively cheap civil divorce because their faux spouse refuses to cooperate. One could even reasonably argue that as of the date this past week when SCOTUS formally declined to hear the last of the many election fraud / foreign election interference cases, we now have to live as Christ-followers in a barbaric society that no longer has a functioning U.S. Constitution because of six or so current justices who appear to be badly compromised – but more about that near the end of this post.
I am reminded of a top-ten ditty back in the 1970’s here, called “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”…
But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
While the context here is obviously a paperless immoral cohabitation, are these not actually the same in God’s eyes as the papered-over situation where God’s word tells us He doesn’t recognize the paper? Some godly, high-integrity marriage permanence pastors, who are well-deserving of any Christ-follower’s deep respect will insist that God expects obtaining a civil divorce out of an adulterous remarriage, for “true” repentance to be complete. I respectfully disagree, both based on the lack of such a requirement in scripture, and the logic that Jesus taught that “divorce” is strictly a tradition of men (Matthew 19:8). In other words, there is nothing to “dissolve” in the case of adulterous remarriage, nor is it a “sin” to live reconciled with the covenant spouse of one’s youth without a second ceremony, because man’s paper did not “dissolve” that original state of holy matrimony.
This biblical fact has long been an important consideration in the event that unilateral no-fault divorce laws were ever to be appropriately judged unconstitutional and individual state laws changed to require mutual consent to “divorce”.
Obviously in most cases, a legal dissolution and reconsecrating of covenant marriage vows in reconciliation cases is desirable, but the point is that not doing them, reconciled or unreconciled, will never keep a repenting, regenerated person out of heaven, according to scripture. Ditto for Catholic “annulments”.
For the unreconciled, God alone sees into every heart to gauge how open a repenting person truly is to God bringing back their estranged true spouse into the holy matrimony home, which is precisely why demands or pleas that “standerinfamilycourt” give assurances of heaven based on so-called “heart repentance” are badly misplaced. Only God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit can ever give that kind of assurance, and only those who are regenerated (“born again”) have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, according to scripture.
To circle back around to the main point, the only biblically-based requirements for exiting an adulterous “remarriage” as a regenerated person, and being fully reconciled with God are:
(1) leave the illicit home permanently
(2) sincerely desire to be reconciled to your true spouse whether or not that appears possible, and whether or not godless society persecutes you for it. (They probably will, and you won’t ever fool God on this one.)
Whom does scripture say should be providing for an indigent / disabled believer who believes they literally have nowhere to go if they exit their immoral cohabitation?
A big clue can be found in 1 Timothy 5:
Honor widows who are actually widows; but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to show proper respect for their own family and to give back compensation to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God. Now she who is actually a widow and has been left alone has set her hope on God, and she continues in requests and prayers night and day. But she who indulges herself in luxury is dead, even while she lives. Give these instructions as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Obviously, back in the 1st century church, “divorcees” were nearly non-existent because the church of Jesus Christ never recognized man’s “divorce” nor “annulment”, and God has always spelled “divorce” as follows: D-E-A-T-H. However, in context of today’s immorality inside and outside the church, we have a lot of figurative “widows” and “widowers” for whom the only remarriage that is legitimate is back to their covenant spouse. It seems not unreasonable that arrangements should be made first with extended family, and failing that, with the church – including the body of other covenant marriage standers, many of whom could benefit from having a roommate while they await the repentance of their own covenant spouse. Many of these standers will themselves have come out of an adulterous “remarriage” and have skills and space to take care of a disabled repenter. Most disabled people in the U.S. at least qualify for some level of sustaining state and Federal benefits, including Social Security, that could help ease the financial burden on the care-giving family member or fellow stander. Many covenant marriage standers’ groups can be found on Facebook or online web pages these days where connections can be made with solid Christian stander communities, and a few of those links will be listed at the end of this post.
As for continuing to live celibate in one’s adulterous household, this notion is quite common, in particular, with Catholic-background people where that church officially condoned this practice as part of its broader contemporary compromise of true biblical marriage indissolubility. These folks will often say they can’t get an “annulment”, so this is their “solution”. There are several kingdom of God problems with this kind of “solution”. I personally like the response a commenter recently made to this issue on the blog post linked above, though this (characteristically) didn’t satisfy the inquirer:
“We are here as witnesses to the unsaved and the world watches us – we are told in 1 Thess 5:22 to ‘abstain from all appearances of evil’ – Why would a sister be living with another sister’s husband? the ‘appearance’ still exists.
“Would you ask a sister – to live with another woman’s husband? Is that seen to the world as ‘chaste and separate’?
“God who designed marriage – also provides all the tools needed for reconciliation – ‘disabled, isolated and no income or the ability to obtain income’ – are no obstacles to God – providing you have a genuine heart to reconcile – he can and will do what you can’t – if you do what you can….”
(Amen!)
The Big Picture is Drastically Changing – For the Worse:
To close out, “standerinfamilycourt” believes strongly that the relatively-affluent and the poor alike, in this nation of the United States have a high risk of losing all or almost all of our creature comforts in the not-too-distant future, as usurped Marxist rule makes further inroads to eliminating our national path back to a constitutional republic. In the U.S., the extreme dysfunction and compromised state of all three branches of the Federal government (plus the military) has been exposed since the November 3, 2020 election, such that constitutional separation-of-powers are rendered almost completely inoperative, hence checks and balances on outright crime and treason in office are rendered effectively “moot”. This sadly occurred with the acquiescence of at least six of our nine SCOTUS justices, who likewise proved themselves unwilling to sacrifice personal comforts in order to do what’s right for the nation at a critical time. The result is that, as one immorally-living set of top leaders replaces the next in the White House, our nation is left under illegitimate rule by those who came into office by what could justifiably be called sedition and Communist China Party purchased collusion (i.e. unprosecuted treason). These illicit leaders have taken deliberate, unilateral actions in the first few weeks of their White House occupation to seriously break down the national defenses of our nation against these colluding foreign enemies, and we face many serious risks ranging from the “global reset” and collapsed financial currency to a widespread attack on our electrical grid that could reportedly kill up to 90% of our population over a year’s time.
What a shame, on top of all these losses, to lose one’s soul as well, for the sake of shaky, disappearing material comforts! Marxist regimes confiscate property at-will, and they wipe out livelihoods with the literal stroke of a pen. They unleash bioweapons on their own people, and get rid of “the least of these” without a pang of conscience. They deliberately go after true citizens of the kingdom of God for the way they live and for their convictions. When God continues to allow this to happen without intervening after the normal channels fail to stop it, it’s a strong sign that His judgment on the nation is fully landing. He is removing His hand of supernatural protection for the nation’s pervasive sexual immorality and, in particular, church leadership condoning the breakdown of the biblical family over decades of concurrent and consecutive polygamy, divorce and remarriage. We’ve been “given over” to our own desires, and at that point, the only reversal of this sequence of events is for church leadership to reverse its course on the same. We know this from following Israel’s history, and we can only hope that it’s not too late already!
“We have been unfaithful to our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land; yet now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. So now let’s make a covenant with our God to send away all the wives and their children, following the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the Law. Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, but we will be with you; be courageous and act.”
Then Ezra stood and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all Israel take an oath that they would do according to this proposal; so they took the oath. Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. Although he went there, he did not eat bread nor drink water, because he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles. So they made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the exiles, that they were to assemble at Jerusalem, and that whoever did not come within three days, in accordance with the counsel of the leaders and the elders, all his property would be forfeited, and he himself would be excluded from the assembly of the exiles.” – from the Book of Ezra, chapter 10.
For this very reason our founding fathers repeatedly warned (I believe, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) that we can only retain our constitutional republic through biblical morality.
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
Links to a few helpful covenant marriage standers sites where chaste connections can be made with other standers:
Covenant Marriage Standers (Facebook)
Testimonies of Repentance from Adulterous Marriages (Facebook)
Restoration of Christian Marriage (MarriageDivorce.com)