MORE ISSUES THAT FEARFUL PASTORS
WILL NOT TALK ABOUT
OR EVEN PRAY ABOUT
N.Y. Farm Owners Fined $13,000 For
Refusing To Host Lesbian Wedding
NY Farmers Guilty & Fined for Being Christian
ALSO SEE:
Cynthia and Robert Gifford make a living by renting out a portion of their principle residence — a barn at their Liberty Ridge Farm in Schaghticoke, New York (near Albany) — for birthday parties and wedding ceremonies. However they declined to accept a lesbian couple's "wedding," so the lesbians from Newark, NJ filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, which found the Giffords guilty of discrimination based on sexual orientation and ordered fines against the Giffords totaling $13,000.
Robert & Cynthia Gifford - Victims of complaint
regarding religious freedom;
NO PASTORS HAVE BEEN WILLING
TO PUBLICLY SUPPORT THEM
Published on May 6, 2013
Robert and Cynthia Gifford are co-owners of Liberty Ridge Farm in New York. After New York enacted its same-sex "marriage" legislation, a lesbian couple approached them about the possibility of holding their same-sex ceremony on the Giffords' family farm. Cynthia Gifford politely refused based on her long-held religious beliefs and are now facing a human rights complaint.
VIDEO ONE YEAR AGO:
FOUR MONTHS AGO:
RECENT VIDEO:
FROM:
Jennie McCarthy and Melisa Erwin of Newark, New Jersey
ALSO SEE:
___________________________________________________________________________
VICKY BEECHING
ANOTHER CCM ARTIST “COMES OUT”
(Friday Church News Notes, August 22, 2014, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - This month, Vicky Beeching, British CCM musician, announced that she is a lesbian. Beeching, who has led worship music at many North American churches and whose “lyrics are sung by millions in America’s Bible Belt,” says, “I’m gay; God loves me just the way I am.” She believes that God led her to “come out.” “I think God has very much walked me through this, hand in hand. I do not feel I left God in back there, in the evangelical church. I feel like he’s become closer and closer. I feel I was in the desert, making this decision, and he’s been in the desert with me, that this is something he’s led me towards, something I am supposed to do” (“Vicky Beeching on Coming Out,”Christian Today, Aug. 14, 2014). Beeching, who grew up Pentecostal and is now Anglican, says that she begged God to take away her sexual attraction to females beginning when she was 13 years old, made confession to a Catholic priest, and sought deliverance through a charismatic exorcism. The very fact that she sought help from priests and charismatic healers demonstrates that she has has looked in the wrong places for spiritual help. Spiritual victory doesn’t come by sacraments and priestcraft. And even for those who are truly born again, God doesn’t take away the old nature in this present life. Sinful thoughts come from the “old man,” but the believer doesn’t have to act on them. Paul says that those who continue to walk in sin as a way of life demonstrate that they haven’t been born again. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21). The believer’s spiritual victory is described in the same passage: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Galatians 5:16-18).
ARE CHRISTIANS THE CAUSE OF HOMOSEXUALS’ PAIN?
(Friday Church News Notes, August 22, 2014, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Many “Christian homosexuals” who “come out” blame Christian teaching on sexuality for their problems. They argue that the teaching that homosexuality is a sin forced them to try to suppress and hide their natural feelings and thus resulted in psychological problems. The British newspaper The Independent calls this “psychological torture ... imposed from a supposedly godly environment” (“Christian Rock Star ‘I’m Gay,” The Independent, Aug. 16, 2014). Vicky Beeching, mentioned in the previous report, even blames a disease (linear scoleroderma morphea) on church teaching. Beginning in Sunday School, she was taught that homosexuality is such a great sin that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for it. After becoming a contemporary Christian musician at age 16, she hid her homosexuality, and she believes that the resulting stress caused psychological and physical problems. When she was diagnosed with the aforementioned disease at age 35 and had to take chemotherapy, she said, “I looked at my life, and thought, ‘I have to come to terms with who I am.’” She determined to “come out” and stop “living as a shadow of a person.” While the stress of living a lie and abiding in unconfessed sin will doubtless cause problems in an individual’s life, the stress cannot be blamed on “the church.” The cause of the stress is not the law but the sin. It is like being in the habit of running red lights because you are “a red-light runner by nature” and blaming the resulting crash on the light. The confusion of “Christian homosexuality” is prophesied in Scripture. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
__________________________________________________________________
UK Worship Artist Whose Songs Are Sung in
American Churches Comes Out as Lesbian
EXCERPTS:
“Not many evangelical Christians hold the theology hold that I do in affirming that same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage is acceptable to God and can be celebrated,” Beeching told Christianity Today in June.
“What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love,” Beeching stated. “I feel certain God loves me just the way I am, and I have a huge sense of calling to communicate that to young people.”
And now, she says she wants to work to change the beliefs of those in the Church.
“I am not angry with the Church even though it’s been a painful journey. I still hold as tightly to my Christian faith as ever,” Beeching said. “I have a lot of hope for the future of the Church—that we can see a move towards inclusion, welcome and love for LGBT people.”
‘No True Christian Hangs on to Their Sin:’
Author Responds to Vicky Beeching’s Coming Out:
EXCERPTS:
“No true Christian hangs on to their sin, tries to justify it, and by doing so, calls God a liar, telling Him He needs to get with the times,” he wrote in a blog post on the matter on Monday.
Muehlenberg disagreed with several claims made by Beeching during her interview, including that God is fine with her homosexuality just the way she is.
Vicky Beeching - first TV interview
about coming out as gay;
debates Scott Lively, evangelist & attorney
August 14th 2014.
Beeching: "Homosexuality is a God-given gift";
determined to change the church from within to accept gay lifestyle:
An evangelical Christian worship singer who has been urging churches to change their doctrine on homosexual behavior since announcing she is a lesbian is at the forefront of a coming tidal wave of “infiltration” of the church by promoters of the “gay” agenda, contends evangelical attorney, evangelist and activist Scott Lively.
Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, said that with insiders on the offensive such as Vicky Beeching, a British-born artist who has become popular among evangelicals in the U.S., he expects “attacks on Christians in America like we’ve never seen before.”
He explained that after the Stonewall riots in 1969, homosexual activists banded together to oppose every American institution that did not fully accept and promote homosexual behavior.
The first victory was over the American Psychiatric Association, and within 40 years, every other group had been conquered, he said. The Boy Scouts were the latest to fall, just a year ago.
Now, the only organization left is the church, he said.
“All of their battle-hardened activists and enormous resources are all directed at the church,” he said.
The problem is that church leaders haven’t been preparing for such a fight, Lively said, and don’t really know what the movement is about.
Beeching revealed she is a lesbian in an interview last week with the Independent newspaper of London.
“What Jesus taught was a radical message of welcome and inclusion and love. I feel certain God loves me just the way I am, and I have a huge sense of calling to communicate that to young people,” she said.
Lively, however, said Beeching represents “the drawing back of the tide before a tsunami” and an indicator of “how bad this is going to get.”
He’s published a brochure for pastors that explains what the Bible says about homosexuality.
“Not a single biblical passage portrays homosexuality positively,” the brochure says. “Jesus unequivocally condemned ALL sexual sin including homosexuality by affirming the ‘one flesh’ paradigm of Genesis.”
It contends a “dangerous modern heresy called ‘gay theology’ is infiltrating the Christian church at an alarming pace.”
“Many believers, fearful of being called ‘haters,’ are trivializing the threat by calling homosexuality ‘just another sin,’” it says.
“But from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible teaches that homosexuality is NOT ‘just another sin.’ It is a symbol of extreme rebellion against God and harbinger of His wrath.”
Listed are multiple biblical condemnations of homosexual behavior.
He said his goal is to put the brochure into the hands of every pastor and Christian leader in America and around the world so they have a biblical explanation for why homosexual behavior is sinful.
Lively noted one of the founders of the “gay” agenda, Herbert Marcuse, expressed a desire to see the “disintegration of the … monogamic and patriarchal family.”
“One last barrier to ‘gay’ cultural hegemony remains: the Christian church,” Lively said.
Lively is not unfamiliar with attacks on Christians. He’s being sued by activists in Uganda who accused him under the Alien Tort Statute of inciting the persecution of homosexuals.
The case is significant because a ruling against him would mean that an international agenda based on anti-biblical standards could trump the U.S. Constitution’s freedom of speech and religion.
U.S. District Judge Michael Posner has let the case brought against Lively by an African group called Sexual Minorities Uganda, or SMUG, proceed.
SMUG calls Lively’s speech against homosexual behavior a “crime against humanity” in violation of “international law.” The plaintiffs allege the Alien Tort Statute in the United States allows them to make the charge in a U.S. court.
But Lively’s attorney, Horatio Mihet of Liberty Counsel, says his client’s preaching is protected by the Constitution.
“We believe SMUG’s claims are firmly foreclosed, not only by the First Amendment right to free speech, but also by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kiobel, which eliminated Alien Tort Statute claims for events that allegedly occurred in foreign nations,” he said.
Yet, Posner took nearly 80 pages to say that he thought SMUG’s allegations were substantive and needed to be adjudicated.
