I feel sorry for the LGBT community – if “community” is what a group of people who prey on each other sexually can be called. Right up till June 26, though we celebrated them in song and on screen, though we revered them as downtrodden, our society didn’t legitimize homosexuality. With gay marriage being the law of the land, we have both redefined marriage and recognized homosexuality as normal. Pigs now fly; fish now drown, and the last barricade on their road to perdition has been taken down.
What will the Church do with this new state of unreality? I don’t know what various denominations will do, but the Church will obey God rather than men keeping in mind the truth expressed by the Psalmist: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Precious little except confess and suffer.
When men do what only God can and should do, they become antichrists. For Luther, authorities that demolish divine institutions such as marriage and family take on the aspect of the antichrist. (Peters, Ten Commandments, 211). Our government first took on the characteristics of the antichrist when it legalized the murder of the unborn over 40 years ago. A generation later it has taken a second undeniable step as antichrist by joining together what God has not.
But remember the antichrist starts inside the visible church. The antichrist has been loose among the denominations since 1 John 2:18. One of his most egregious appearances is when denominations declare two faiths to be in fellowship when they are not. They in effect join together what God has never put together. For example, the LCMS declares that fellowship exists between her and the AALC which does not believe, teach, practice, or confess closed Communion. No more than the government has the power to join man to man or woman to woman can a denomination join contradictory faiths together. And when they do they act as an antichrist.
I knew gay marriage was going to be the law of the land when in September 2013 I saw that President H. W. Bush, war hero, “conservative,” Republican had attended the gay marriage of two long time friends as a witness. There he was in his wheelchair beaming. When we commune with those whom we know don’t believe, teach, or confess that same thing as we do, we are doing what President Bush did. We are witnessing that men can join what God has not, will not. We are testifying on behalf of the antichrist.
We’re doing to brothers and sisters in Christ what our country has done to homosexuals. We’re dropping a barricade, maybe not the last, on their road to perdition. Shocked that I phrase it this way? Are departures from Biblical doctrine steps away from Jesus or not? Is there any way a false teaching can lead to the true God?
It is the evil one’s way to make us more concerned and focused on sin outside of our church than what is going on within. But judgment begins at the house of God says Peter. So best we begin here too.
