Response to Chelsen Vicari's Article "How the New Christian Left Is Twisting the Gospel."

Here's a link to the article.

Here is the response in the comments of the article by one of our admins. Apologies for the fact that this hasn't been reviewed by a copy editor for typical typos and errors. It's all been done on the fly this morning.

Wow. Just wow. The level to which you've been brainwashed is utterly astounding. You just can't get off the two issues you have made your idols. You are obsessed with these two issues. You have made them you religion discarded being a follower of Jesus. Jesus said these two things over, and over, and over, and over again.

Matthew 22:37-40 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

John 13:34-35
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

He didn't harp on abortion and homosexuality, ever. In fact he said nothing about either one. Not once. Yes, he said marriage was intended to be between one man and one woman, but he also said in the same sentence, "Not everyone can follow this command, only those to whom it has been given. If you can follow it, you should. Then he mentioned eunuchs who were born that way.

Do some historical research written by serious scholars about born eunuchs during the time of Jesus. Not some cookie cutter research regurgitated by students who graduated from conservative seminary degree mills who are forced to sign contracts demanding that they check their brains at the door.

Not a single one of the 5 or 6 verses referring to homosexuality in the Bible are talking about sexual orientation and committed same sex relationships.

The Bible is silent about this because it's not a sin.

If you're truely serious about the Bible I challenge you to Goggle the article, "Clobbering 'Biblical' Gay Bashing," by Rev. Mark Sandlin and read the whole thing. There is a whole host of related scholarship out there about the same topic as well.

Matthew Vines devoted two years of his life studying this topic and then wrote the book, "God and the Gay Christian," which covers every single verse in detail as well, from every historical and cultural angle.

As for abortion you are being misled by Satan pure and simple, to get you to adopt an un-Godly political platform. Right wing politics and the teachings of Jesus could not be more contradictory in nature. They are completely opposite philosophies.

Did you know that a 1968 a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing 'individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility' as justifications for ending a pregnancy?

In 1973, Wallie Amos ‘W. A.’ Criswell, President of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1968 to 1970, had this to say:

“I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed."

Enter con-man Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, and Godfather of The “Christian” Right, who literally shopped various issues trying to galvanize a conservative “Christian” movement.

His hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.

Google the Politico article called, "The Real Origins of the Religious Right." It is an extremely well researched article about how Weyrich turned the made up issue of abortion (never even mentioned in the Bible) in to the litmus test to judge whether or not someone is a Christian.

That's Blasphemy folks. Blasphemy.

Ever since the above described shift began pseudo-religious, political operatives like Tony Perkins and "The Family Research Council" have conducted a multiple decade propaganda / brainwashing campaign that would make Joseph Goebbels proud! Wouldn't you know it? The motto of the Family Research Council is "Pro Marriage & Pro Life." Those two terms are dog whistles for "Anti LGBT Equality & Anti Choice." They've cherry-picked a few scriptures and twisted them to mean something they don't. Let's look at some of those scriptures. Analysis below from "The Bible is Pro-Choice," by Joyce Arthur.

The first such passage is found in Psalm 139:13-16:

"For Thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst weave me together in my mother's womb. I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."

All this passage states is that God is directly involved in the creation of a fetus and knows its future. This is useless for the anti-choice position, since God creates all living things, including trees and bugs. Plus, just because God is supposedly omniscient doesn't give fetuses any special status—it simply means God already knows whether they will live or die. It is dishonest to conclude from this verse that a fetus is a human being deserving of more protection than women. The passage is poetic prose that anti-choicers have twisted and trivialized by giving it a literal, objective meaning where there is none.

The second passage used by anti-choicers is similar:

"Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you'..." (Jeremiah 1:4-5)

Unfortunately, anti-choicers usually stop right there, and forget the rest of Verse 5, which negates their preferred meaning:

"...'and I appointed you a prophet to the nations.'"

This passage is specific to one, very special person—Jeremiah the prophet, whom God has called to provide miraculous powers and authority to the world. Since we are not all destined to be divine prophets, this verse cannot be construed as applying to any fetus except the unborn Jeremiah. Again, anti-choicers are being dishonest by pulling this verse totally out of its context.

The third passage quoted by anti-choicers tells the story of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary the mother of Jesus, while both were pregnant:

"In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." (Luke 1:39-41)

This passage simply records a fetus kicking in the womb. We can only wonder in befuddlement why anti-choicers think this would help them. Besides, John the Baptist is yet another divine fetal prophet ordained by God. Since very few of us are chosen by God before birth to herald the arrival of the Messiah on earth, we cannot claim that this passage venerates all fetuses.

It is you who have hijacked and twisted the simple and beautiful Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and turned it into a messy and ugly justification for a political platform based on greed, selfishness and objectivism.

It is you who needs to look deep in your heart and repent.

Read Matthew 25. It is the NATIONS who will stand before God and answer for how they treated "the least of these." God didn't command us to set up a winner takes all, dog eat dog, the strong will rise to the top society. Quite the opposite and that should be obvious to you if you knew Jesus.

I admonish you to start over and truly get to know him. You are being used as a pawn to push off an evil system and a "Gospel" that is anti-Christ.

Isaiah 10

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?

Jeremiah 22
Judgment Against Wicked Kings, is another good place to start.

https://www.biblegateway.com/p...

I'll be praying that your eyes are opened. The great apostasy began about 35 years ago and it has taken over most of the modern church.