And Pharisees came up to Him and tested Him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that He Who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” (Matthew 19:3-7, ESV)

A Lot Of Leaven Is Now Spreading Throughout The Church

Apprising Ministries now concludes what was begun in Bible Outs Gay Marriage. Sadly, because of the egregiously ecumenical Emerging Church de-formation of the Christian faith aka Emergent Church—now morphing into Emergence Christianity (EC), with its uber-inclusive embrace of anyone who calls themselves a Christian, we now have “Progressive Christians” ala Living Spiritual Teacher and “Progessive Christian” scholar Marcus Borg and Diana Butler Bass operating within the evangelical community of the visible church. 

And proving this really is as simple as pointing you to the following Tweet today from TransFORM, which I pointed out in Emerging Church TransFORM is a social network created by “Kingdom Journalist” Steve Knight, who works with Emergent Village. In fact, the below quite literally went online just a minute after I wrote the prior sentence earlier today, and concerns an event “organized by” TransFORM member “pastor” Carol Howard Merrit:  

@trans4m Meet other Progressive Christian leaders in the D.C. area – tonight at “Meet the Beatitudes”: http://is.gd/4SBcd (Online source) 

But you need to understand that this so-called progressive Christianity really is neither progressive or Christian; what we find is it’s essentially liberalism aka modern theology revisited, and their view of Scripture is the same as those original liberals. They both deny the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture, which then leads us today to The Emergence Of Postmodern Apostles Of Unbelief; to borrow a term from Charles Spurgeon, who battled the original “apostles of doubt” in what became known as The Downgrade Controversy.

So, because of the confusion sown by such of these, before we move on we need to do a little bit of a kind of Christianity 101 re. the Word of God—the Bible. Briefly, 2 Peter 1:20-21 — Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The imagery in the Greek is that these men were steered by the Holy Spirit as the wind in the sail of a ship moves it in the direction it wishes to go.

This does not mean at all that God somehow dictated what these prophets wrote; rather, the Lord merely guided these people so that what they wanted voluntarily to write would also end up being precisely what the Holy Spirit wanted written. That fact is, it’s every bit a creative miracle as the Virgin Birth was. In fact, 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that Scripture was ultimately written—given life—by God the Holy Spirit just as the Lord breathed life into Adam — All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

The Genuine Christian Believes And Approaches Scripture Just The Way Christ Jesus Did

You see, all Scripture was guided—inspired—by God, which is the same view that Jesus Himself held; and the truth is, no one has any business claiming to be a Christian and not having the same belief about Scripture the Master had. Now we can expand a bit upon what I covered recently in Jesus Defines Marriage For Red Letter Christians based upon the opening text above, and specifically verses 4-6:

4 “He Who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

First, we note that Jesus is building His teaching upon what the text of the Bible itself says; and so, we see an example of what is also known as Sola Scriptura. He is actually combining two different texts from Genesis, and from two different chapters, to prove His point; which is often negatively referred to today as “proof-texting,” and quite frowned upon in the EC. It’s also out of vogue with more and more younger mainstream evangelicals as well. And we do agree; a text used out of context, for a proof-text, only ends up as a pretext.

However, as Jesus just showed us, it’s also entirely possible to use the Scripture—in context—in order to build our theology upon the Rock of what God has said in the Bible (see—Matthew 7:24-27). The Master takes what He says above in verse 4 from Genesis 1:27 — in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them; and then, to finish His point concerning God’s view of marriage, Jesus combines it with Gen. 2:24 — Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Ok, so right there in the Book of Genesis, God the Holy Spirit has just given us the Words of the LORD God Almighty—our Creator—as He provides the Lord’s definition of His intention for the way a marriage should be; and His view is the only one that matters. It’s very clear: The man (male) becomes one flesh with his wife (female); no way around it. And it’s at this point that we need to remember that the Bible tells us Christ Jesus of Nazareth Himself happens to be that Creator — Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3).

The fact is, the historic orthodox Christian Church has always taught that Jesus is the LORD God Himself in human flesh. Yet this is one of the grave dangers of embracing this encroaching postmodern theology, much of it a form of postliberalism, and supposed progressive Christians who do not believe Jesus is Who He said He was—they are unregenrate; dead in their sin, and it’s Jesus Who says so — I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I Am [the one I claim to be], you will indeed die in your sins” (John 8:24).

So the Christian has no need to worry about, or take our teachings from, those who are dead in their sin. No; rather, we need to preach to them God’s Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Name. As we close this out for now I’ll bring a couple of things to your attention: 1) Jesus remains our Creator, whether one believes in Him or not, and He did define marriage as a man and a wife i.e. male and female. And 2) so-called Red Letter Christians don’t really believe their own rhetoric; because if they really did, the gay marriage debate would already be over.

See also:

GROWING GAY AGENDA IN EVANGELICALISM

THE SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY IS DIFFERENT

HOMOPRESSION IS AT LEAST AS BAD AS HOMOPHOBIA

EX-HOMOSEXUAL FRIEND OF APPRISING MINISTRIES 

BUT DO EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY AND BRIAN MCLAREN REALLY LOVE GAY PEOPLE?

THE NIGHTMARE BEGINNING FOR MAINSTREAM EVANGELICALISM

KEN SILVA, JAY BAKKER AND HOMOSEXUALITY