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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wow! Now tell us what you really think!! How
interesting that you would think these churches are spiritually 'castrated'. Do
you attended them or have you ever heard the message there?? Or are you going by
the gossip that is ever present about any church...including your own. It is
dangerous to make judgements based on what you have been told by someone
(perhaps a disgruntled someone), I beleive the bible speaks clearly about not
doing just that.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=1564_2@mail.com href="mailto:1564_2@mail.com">New man</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, July 08, 2005 10:54
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Responsible for
Moscow's Homosexual Sin: Evangelical Free, Bridge Bible Church, Trinity
Baptist, Church of the Nazarene, Christian Life Center</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>Garret Clevenger,</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>On homosexuality, the Bible is clear. God hates
them and has provided that they be put to death by the civil authority. Now,
the implementation of all this must occur with all wisdom and love.
Enforcement of God's law is compassion.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>On the other hand, it's not only the homosexuals of
Moscow that need to repent. Spitiually castrated churches are the cause (e.g.,
Evangelical Free, Bridge Bible Church, Trinity Baptist, Church of the
Nazarene, Christian Life Center, et al.). </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>I offer the following article to our local
offending churches as a rebuke and a call to repentence.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>"Arrows in the Hand of a Limp-Wristed Man,"<B> by
</B>Ben Merkle</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>The homosexual movement is by necessity a parasitic
movement. Gay men don't reproduce and lesbians only do so with some clever
science or helpful friends. Therefore, the gay world is a necessarily barren
world and depends on the straight community for its children. Without the
children of heterosexuals, the homosexuals could have no next generation. But,
despite the homosexual sterility, the gay movement seems to have no shortage
of new blood. So where do they all come from? The answer is fairly tragic.
They come from the Church. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>Christianity has become a spiritually castrated
movement. As a Church we are not able to reproduce. We might produce children
of the flesh, a host of Ishmaels, but no children of the promise, no Isaacs.
Our children grow up in the Church only to lose interest in the faith and to
walk away from the blood of Christ and the glories of the New Covenant. We
have grown so used to losing our children to unbelief that we have begun to
expect it. We expect apostasy so much that we grow skeptical of children who
do not abandon the faith. And so the Church has become the incubator for the
next generation of homosexuals. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>But the expectation of apostasy is the spirit of
the age and is actually larger than the Church. We expect our children to
rebel against us, but so do the pagans. They all expect to face the day when
their children will spit on the gods of their forefathers and strike out in a
new direction. They expect this because this is what they did when they were
young and (not being very imaginative) they can't fathom anyone being
different. Vegetarians know that under the influence of bad friends their
children will begin sneaking out in the middle of the night to McDonald's.
Pacifists expect to discover their sons enlisted in the Marine Corps. Tree
Huggers know that their children will someday probably take up whittling.
Rebellion is an essential ingredient of American childhood. It's part of the
American liturgy. So it's no wonder that the homosexual community expects our
children to rebel since this is expected by everyone, including us.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>The Church must repent of this terrible lack of
faith. How can we say that we believe the Gospel, a Gospel which has been
founded on promises to a thousand generations, when we don't even believe in
blessings to the next generation? The Psalmist describes the children of one's
youth as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. Our children are meant to stand
next to us in the fight against God's enemies. But here we are staring at
quivers full of arrows and all anyone sees are fresh recruits for our enemies.
Run a thought experiment. Imagine two men in a small town debating the dangers
of a particularly potent local Reformed Church which has begun causing a
hubbub in the town.</FONT><A
href="http://mail01.mail.com/scripts/mail/16-2footnotes.php//lRecipio"><U><SUP><FONT
color=#0000ff><FONT face=Arial size=1>1</FONT></U></SUP></FONT></A><SUP><FONT
face=Arial size=1> The congregation is about one thousand, which is
particularly large for that community. Now one man says to the other, rather
dismissively, that of those thousand church members, almost seven hundred are
children. Should this fact make one more nervous or less nervous about the
potency of the Church? What a terrible tragedy that a host of children in the
Church's ranks calms the opposition, rather than filling them with fear.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>Try another thought experiment. Imagine America at
its founding, with a deep and glorious Christian heritage. Now imagine the
overwhelming number of American Christian fathers raising their children to
know the Lord. And imagine that continuing for just ten generations. What
would modern America look like? How would things be different? So, why is it
that we think the homosexual movement is a political problem requiring a
political solution? Why is it that we think the heart of the problem is the
shanghaiing of state legislatures or renegade judges in San Francisco? We
continue our fevered politicking all the while handing the arrows made for the
hand of a mighty man over to the opposition, generation after generation. The
problem is us. The problem is in our churches and our families, not in our
legislatures. We don't raise our children faithfully. And then, when our
children turn on us and join the opposition, we blindly blame a political
agenda. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>Anyone serious about combating the homosexual
movement must begin at home with repentance and faithful child rearing. And
what a blessing from God that the most important battle the Church faces
begins when you come home from work, take your tie off, and begin wrestling
with your son. How many Christians, pastors in particular, neglect to play
with their kids because they are busy doing the work of the kingdom? But in
doing so, they are actually neglecting the most important work of the kingdom.
Isn't it a tragedy that a young man would grow up to find the fellowship of
sodomy more lovely and enjoyable than the fellowship of the saints? But how
many Christian fathers are busy making it easy for their sons to draw just
that sort of conclusion? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=1>We have been given a kind, caring, loving Father in
Heaven, whose attention is never hard to get, and we have been commanded to
imitate Him to our children. In the whole fight against homosexuality, this is
the most important agenda for us to pursue.</FONT> </P></SUP><BR>--
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