Saturday, May 26, 2007

Remember Lot's Wife, but Don't Forget About Job's or Adam's

Paul Edwards writes in an article titled 'Jerry Falwell was a Theophobe' in Townhall.com:

Rev. Dr. Mel White... After working with Dr. Falwell on his autobiography Mr. White announced to his family that he was gay. He soon left his wife for his male lover. He had “come out.” He now leads a pro-homosexual, anti-evangelical activist group of college kids who purport to be both Christian and homosexual...

Mel blames Dr. Falwell’s message in part for his own lifelong battle to overcome same-sex attraction. He told me:

I went through 35 years of electric shock, and aversive therapy and exorcism trying to get rid of the demon of homosexuality. I finally slit my wrists and went to the hospital, and my wife said, “You know, Mel, you’re a good person, but you’re gay and you need to accept that.” And in accepting that I began a new kind of life; my whole life changed, and I became a person who loved Christ in a whole new way, I felt His Holy Spirit working in a whole new way.


"...Mel, you’re a good person, but you’re gay and you need to accept that.” It would have been wise for Mel White to follow Job's example concerning certain suggestions from his wife...

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"
(Job 2:7-9, NIV)

Mr. White needed to mimic Job's reply:

He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. (Job 2:10, NIV)

Job was apparently familiar with the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis concerning the result of a similar circumstance:

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return."
(Genesis 3:17-19, NIV)

Paul Edwards:
There is no question that there was fear inherent in the words spoken by Jerry Falwell on the moral issues confronting our nation. But it wasn’t Dr. Falwell’s fear of homosexuality (or any other sin) that fueled his passion to call this nation to repentance, but rather his fear of God. Jerry Falwell spoke the words of Christ to the nation. Jesus said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22). Jerry Falwell was a voice crying in the wilderness of the moral decline of late 20th century America. He lifted up his voice like a trumpet, boldly confronting his generation with Christ’s words. The voice of the prophet may be silenced, but the word of our God shall stand forever.


The fear of the LORD versus the fear of PMS or PMDD. We preach, you decide.

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