If our Puritan forefathers, or the founders of Methodism for that matter, were to come from the grave and find themselves in our permissive society of open adultery, easy divorce, and homosexualism they would be shocked at what they beheld. As the country song would put it, if there were a window in the floor of heaven, they would "turn over in their graves.” And so would our grandparents - so much for "the faith of our fathers,” but then, we no longer sing such ancient hymns in our contemporary worship.
Can you believe there was ever a society in which prostitution and sodomy were actually condemned? Yet, when Moses had gathered the children of Israel on the Plain of Moab, he reiterated the laws of Jehovah - the God that delivered them from Egyptian bondage. We read from the law of God, "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 23:17-18). In an age when fornication and sodomy were part of heathen worship, this was really going against the grain! To think, God would actually refuse the contribution (i.e., hire or price) from a prostitute or homosexual prostitute.
Perhaps the two thousand years of Christian background in our culture has been too good to us. We forget those who died for their faith in the Roman arena. We face no greater challenges to our faith in the twenty first century than our brethren in the first century. Jude still exhorts us "that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3). He points out that they too faced "ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4). He speaks of the angels that fell and are reserved in chains until the judgment of the great day (Verse 6). He mentions the example of Sodom and Gomorrah who had given themselves to fornication and homosexualism and are to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire (verse 7). He notes that those practicing such immorality were spots on the love feasts as they are ours (verse 11) and are clouds without water, raging waves foaming out their own shame; and wandering stars, "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (verse 11-13).
Sex is a wonderful gift from our Creator. However, God put a wall around sex, and that wall is marriage. Sex outside the wall is still sin. In other words, adultery is still an abomination in the sight of the God of the Bible. As the Lord explained it to the Pharisees of his day, "Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. . . . Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery” (Luke 16:14-18 ).
Dale I. Royal, Elk City OK
