SCOTUS: A NEW KIND OF TYRANNY?

SCOTUS: A NEW KIND OF TYRANNY?

The 5 – 4 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to make all 50 states of the union endorse, encourage and promote unnatural sex by redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is reason for great concern.

First off SCOTUS, to my knowledge, never actually provided a definition of the thousands of years old Biblical institution of marriage that the States are supposed to comply with. And secondly, how on earth did SCOTUS come up with its decision to bring chaos into the American household?

To me it is all quite straightforward and no mystery whatsoever: It is on account of a liberal view of the Constitution and the Holy Scriptures upon which the Constitution is based.

A “wax-nose” view of Scripture is held by Theological liberals whereby, very simply and very briefly, the Bible is viewed as a record of humanity’s search for God rather than God’s revelation to humanity. With such a view the Bible can be twisted this way and that in order to make it say whatever you want it to say.

The refrain is that those people back then do not know what we know today and therefore wrote a lot of things out of ignorance. In other words, they got things wrong! Apply this to the American Constitution and you can see something of where the five of the nine SCOTUS members are coming from. An example of this erroneous way of thinking would be that were James Madison et al to construct the Constitution today they would have most certainly intended that same-sex couples not be excluded from marriage! In other words, (like the Bible as viewed by Liberal Theologians), the Constitution can be twisted (like a wax-nose) to point in whatever direction most suits the political views of the liberal judges! Thus politics not truth that drives these five judges, (unlike the Christian who believes that God’s Law upon which human law is derived is absolute, truth to the liberal is merely relative, which is to say that these judges are Post Modernists and as such, unlike those who hold the Christian worldview, have a worldview of uncertainties.)  

Why should I, as a resident of Australia (not America), care what happens in America? Well, the United States of America is a great experiment, a great Christian experiment! If America goes under the whole of the West goes down with her because America as a world power is what protects and maintains the Western freedoms we all enjoy. America is our big brother defending the rest of us against bullies such as ISIS and the utopian follies of Socialism etc. But alas! There are five liberal judges wanting the whole of the Union to destabilize the very bedrock upon which society, including all of Western society, rests, i.e., Biblical marriage which is between one man and one woman for life!

In light of recent events (such as the vilification of bakers for their refusal to go against their consciences and bake cakes that openly promote a gay lifestyle) as a Christian minister who is a marriage celebrant I am getting a little nervous, foreseeing a time when I will be hated and thrown in prison for my refusal to marry same-sex couples an account of my holding the thousands of years old and Biblical definition of marriage.

Please do not ask me to concur with those five liberal judges who endorse and promote sodomy and now would have every one of the fifty States of America submit to their will and do likewise! This is not freedom. This is not the America of the Founding Fathers! This is tyranny!  

A FATHER'S LOVE

A Father’s Love

 

My wife Dorothy and I share an evening meal once a week at our place with our daughters and their husbands. I was silently watching my little two-year old grandson playing with his daddy. My tall son-in-law was sitting on the carpet and his son had his undivided attention.

I thank the Lord that he gave me three daughters all of whom I love dearly. However, I perceive that there is a special relationship between a father and a son, just as my wife Dorothy has that special ‘girly’ relationship with our three daughters. At the end of our evening together the boy’s dad picks his son up in his strong arms and carries him. It’s plain to see that he loves his son. In this I see a cameo of God’s love for His children.

An Army Chaplain was lamenting that his grandson, the apple of his eye, had grown up and had gone off the rails. I pray for my little grandson daily that he’ll always know a close walk with the Lord. However, I’m reminded that God’s people, from Adam till today, have been known to wander from the well-lit paths of righteousness to play the fool in the shadows. One only has to read the warnings in the Book of Proverbs about the flattering seductress. However, ‘A wise son makes glad a father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother’ Proverbs 10:1. I pray my little grandson will grow up wise!

God’s children in the wilderness years were easily enticed away from their loving heavenly Father. Indeed, it’s during tough times that our love for our Father is most tested.  We look to God to protect us, but when devastation and destruction comes we tend to question His love for us. Wandering in the wilderness His children had been afraid to enter the Promised Land. So Moses in a speech reminded them of how God had looked after them, and, ‘In the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place’ Deuteronomy 1:31.

How does a man carry his son? He wraps his arms around him and holds him close to his heart. But look again at God: ‘The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are His everlasting arms’ Deuteronomy 33:27a. How did Job manage to trust God when his faith was so sorely tested? God asked Job rhetorically, ‘Have you an arm like God?’ Job 40:9a.

I love that poem ‘Footprints in the Sand.’ ‘You promised me Lord, that if I followed You, You would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed You most, have You not been there for me? The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”’

 

From - http://www.amazon.com/CURTAIN-Other-Contemplations-Cullan-McKinlay-ebook/dp/B009HN05EW/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_20?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434877855&sr=1-20&refinements=p_82%3AB006NTVAWY

VISIONS

Visions

 Because they were one of God’s methods of revelation the Bible contains a record of many visions. Visions increased with the arrival of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. (Joel 2:28 with Acts 2:17). One of my favourites is part of what John sees on the Isle of Patmos: ‘Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea’ Revelation 21:1. Sometimes the visions contained real scenes and other times they contained symbols. Context helps us decide which. However, my old theological professor never tired of saying that what John saw was this old heaven and this old earth renewed not replaced!

It is precisely because visions in the Bible are revelation from God that we can determine how we are supposed to understand them. The Bible is self-interpreting, which is to say that ‘The infallible rule of interpretation is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.’ (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1, para. 4)

I don’t know about you but I think there is more than enough going on with the revelation of the sixty-six books of the Bible than having to worry about people claiming to have had a vision. Whereas the former can be interpreted objectively, on account of it being subjective interpreting the latter is fraught with many dangers. Not the least of them being darkness posing as light! I recall one preacher telling his congregation about the vision he had while looking at a tapestry. What it meant to him might have been edifying but it was wasted on me, so much so that I saw it as my cue to leave that congregation to find another in which the Bible was expounded! This is not to suggest that Christians cannot experience the close and intimate presence of God.  However, I personally favour the Spirit working with His written Word in my heart than me wondering whether Satan was trying to trick me with a lying sign or wonder! The former is objective (and therefore can be tested against the rest of Scripture) but the latter is subjective for the one who experienced the vision and also for anyone who wishes to believe it.

New religions have been formed by people claiming to have had visions, e.g., Joseph Smith’s ‘Mormonism’ and Muhammad’s ‘Islam.’   

After my conversion and thus my becoming spiritually tuned into God as a new Christian I entered into an intellectual and emotional wrestling match at the subjective level. How was I supposed to tell the difference between the Spirit of God acting on my personal life and the spirit of darkness posing as light? Scripture says, ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.’ 1 John 4:1. How are we to test the spirits? We test their view of the Jesus revealed in the Bible. Scripture says that He is the Word, the final revelation of God, which is to say that there are no more prophets to come after Him. E.g., ‘God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son’ Hebrews 1a.

The Bible is complete. Jesus is the last prophet. ‘I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth’ Job 19:25.