"A growing number of pastors in the United Methodist Church say they are no longer willing to obey a church rule that prohibits them from officiating at same-sex marriages, despite the potential threat of being disciplined or dismissed from the church."Even if they are willing to defy their denomination, my question is, why are they willing to defy God?
The final line of the article reads,
"Hundreds of pastors from areas including Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and the northeastern New England states have signed statements in recent weeks asserting their willingness to defy the rule."It is obvious from reading the many articles that have appeared that there are many clergy on both sides of the "homosexual Rights" movement, including the debate about same-sex marriage.
The liberal media love to quote favorably those clergy who promote same-sex marriage, while they cast doubt on those clergy who stick with the traditional viewpoint. But can both sides truly be speaking for God? If both sides are representing God's viewpoint, God must be awfully confused and not all-knowing and all-wise as we believe.
No! The truth is, God has spoken, and He has spoken clearly through His word. God's word is the Bible, the source document for our Christian faith. Those who proclaim the Bible speak for God. Those who deny the clear teaching of the Bible speak for themselves.
In Jeremiah 23:16, God said, "They speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord." God is warning the Israelites not to listen to those false prophets who proclaim their own ideas. They are liars if they claim to speak for Him. Only those who proclaim the revelation of God are legitimate spokesmen.
The same warning is valid for us today. Don't listen to false prophets who proclaim their own human reasoning rather than the truth of God's word. We should never consider them spokesmen for God any more than we would consider someone a spokesman for Islam who denied the Koran. Could we even consider them Muslim if they denied the Koran? Can we even consider those Christian who deny the Bible? Yet they are precisely the ones the liberal media go to for the Christian position. I deny they can possibly speak for God.
God's word is clear. God created men and women with uniquely different bodies, which allows sexual reproduction, and with different temperaments, which allows them to fulfill their different roles as fathers and mothers. God Himself brought that first man and woman together and joined them in the first marriage.
Adam didn't need just a companion, or God could have given him a dog. Adam didn't need just an economic partner, or God could have given him another man. But in order for them to obey God's command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, Adam needed a woman. This is why the first marriage was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
God further stated His purpose for marriage in Malachi 2:15, "But did He not make them one. . .and why one? He seeks godly offspring." Obviously, this refers back to the creation account of Adam and Eve, and by implication, to us as well. And the question asked is the very one we are debating today. Why is there marriage? The answer is simple. God wants to see the birth and nurture of godly offspring. This takes a father and a mother. God's commentary of that first marriage is found in Genesis 2:24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
God intended marriage to be a safe place where a loving couple, a man and a woman, could bear and raise children. This has provided the definition of marriage from the beginning, and remains the definition today. Any other arrangement is not marriage - not according to God. Anyone, including any clergy, who says otherwise is speaking on their own behalf, not God's, and he is doing so in clear defiance of the word of God. They are not the voice of God. They do not speak for God. They are false prophets and shouldn't be listened to.
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