Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Trouble We Are In

The news of this week is that Louie Giglio, well-known evangelical pastor, was disinvited to pray at the Presidential Inaguaration.  The reason?  He believes a biblical moral standard that historic, biblical Christianity has espoused for 2000 years.  And Judaism for several thousand more than that!

A left-wing, liberal group discovered that Giglio preached a sermon more than a decade ago in which he called homosexuality a sin.  They ranted and made a fuss, very typical of left-wing activists these days when they discover someone holding to a belief not their own, and the White House (still the most liberal, anti-conservative White House regime in history), made it clear that Giglio (and those who think likewise) are not their type.

Russel Moore stated this week in his blog article "Louie Giglio and the New State Church" that when it is now impossible for one who holds to the catholic Christian view of marriage and the gospel to pray at a public event, we now have a de facto established state church. Just as the pre-constitutional Anglican and congregational churches required a license to preach in order to exclude Baptists, the new state church requires a “license” of embracing sexual liberation in all its forms.

Albert Mohler hit the nail on the head in  his article The Giglio Imbroglio — The Public Inauguration of a New Moral McCarthyism.   

Louie Giglio was cast out of the circle of the acceptable simply because a liberal watchdog group found one sermon he preached almost twenty years ago. If a preacher has ever taken a stand on biblical conviction, he risks being exposed decades after the fact. Anyone who teaches at any time, to any degree, that homosexual behavior is a sin is now to be cast out.

That is the quintessential Christian Gospel. That is undiluted biblical truth. Those words are the consensus of the Church for over 2,000 years, and the firm belief held by the vast majority of Christians around the world today.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an embarrassment. By its newly articulated standard, any preacher who holds to the faith of the church for the last 2,000 years is persona non grata. By this standard, no Roman Catholic prelate or priest can participate in the ceremony. No Evangelical who holds to biblical orthodoxy is welcome. The vast majority of Christians around the world have been disinvited. Mormons, and the rabbis of Orthodox Judaism are out. Any Muslim imam who could walk freely in Cairo would be denied a place on the inaugural program. Billy Graham, who participated in at least ten presidential inaugurations is welcome no more. Rick Warren, who incited a similar controversy when he prayed at President Obama’s first inauguration, is way out of bounds. In the span of just four years, the rules are fully changed.
The gauntlet was thrown down yesterday, and the axe fell today.

This is precisely what biblical Christians cannot do. While seeking to be gentle in spirit and ruthlessly Gospel-centered in speaking of any sin, we cannot cease to speak of sin as sin. To do so is not only to deny the authority of Scripture, not only to reject the moral consensus of the saints, but it undermines the Gospel itself. The Gospel makes no sense, and is robbed of its saving power, if sin is denied as sin.

The slippery slope is getting even more slippery.  When the foundations are destroyed, what will the righteous do?

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