Lies: Abortion, Feminism, and Homosexuality

[00:00:01] Thank you very much. It is my most sincere honor to be able to take part in the Peter Jones Lecture Series. [00:00:09] Dr. Jones has been a great and very helpful influence on me, and I am honored to be here. And I am here to talk to you about lies, because that's an important subject, because we know it's a sin to tell a lie, but it's also a sin to believe a lie. [00:00:28] And the lies I'm here to talk to you about are pretty serious ones. Abortion, feminism, and homosexuality. [00:00:39] Well, the darkest place in Durham, North Carolina is Planned Parenthood On a busy Saturday morning And on Saturday, February 14, 2026, a crisp blue sky above belied the violent darkness inside the that building. [00:00:57] On that day, Christians from many local churches gathered in a church parking lot to pick up signs and don our hope is here T shirts in anticipation of holding a prayer meeting on the front lawn of the Chapel Hill Planned Parenthood. [00:01:15] A few miles from Planned Parenthood stands the community church of Chapel Hill where quote unquote pastor and local Elon University professor was Rebecca Todd Peters, delivered a viral and infamous sermon on July 9, 2023, extolling the beauty of her two previous abortions and declaring that through those abortions she now reads all of scripture. [00:01:46] Rebecca, who revels that her abortions left her with liberty, love and freedom, not shame, guilt or remorse, preached this quote, blessed are those who end their pregnancies for they will be known for their loving kindness. [00:02:07] This was the sermon where abortion became heralded as a sacrament. [00:02:14] Rebecca said in her sermon that if Jesus were alive today, he would be serving as a Planned Parenthood clinic escort, standing outside abortion facilities and protecting abortion seeking women from the evil fundamentalists that seek to dissuade them. [00:02:35] Jesus, she said, knows that abortion is essential loving kindness. [00:02:44] Now, after a couple of lectures here about one ism and twoism, we hope that you are recognizing this as a classic move of every false teacher to empty theological terms of their biblical content and fill it with dupes. You know what a dupe is? Dupe is like going to TJ Maxx and buying a, you know, a Gucci bag that isn't a Gucci bag. A dupe is a palatable, cheap substitute. [00:03:20] And our current climate in American evangelicalism is filled with dupes. [00:03:28] And you know what they do? They demand that we all use these dupes in place of truth. [00:03:39] Oh, let me say one more thing about pastor, quote unquote and Professor Rebecca. She also serves on the Planned Parenthood board where we were standing. [00:03:50] Well, we prayed together as we walked the two blocks to the clinic, and when we turned the corner and arrived, we witnessed a riot. [00:03:59] Planned Parenthood escorts wearing LGBTQ T shirts threateningly thrust open enormous rainbow umbrellas in the faces of Christian sidewalk counselors who were holding out gospel tracts as cars sped into the parking lot, almost taking out a few other Planned Parenthood. Escorts danced and sang karaoke style, while boom boxes and portable stereos blasted the pop tune Twist and Shout and the Disney lullaby. A whole new world Aberrant party music and a baby's cradle song serve as prelude to forceps and murder, according to the Planned Parenthood website. That's the point. [00:04:51] Party music keeps clients in a happy place and drowns out Christian opposition with the signs the escorts hold to warn customers not to open their windows and receive information from Christians for any reason. [00:05:09] What's the threat, you might ask? [00:05:12] Well, Christian sidewalk counselors from our pro life group hold up signs that read, free ultrasounds. [00:05:19] Hope is here. [00:05:21] May I pray for you. [00:05:24] This was met by Planned Parenthood escorts with curses and fists. [00:05:30] And one has to wonder why members of LGBTQ work so tirelessly for Planned Parenthood at all. [00:05:40] Homosexual sex is barren. [00:05:43] It requires absolutely no Planned Parenthood abortion services. [00:05:49] But when transgender Gnosticism shifted the definition of personhood from creation to self construction, this made requisite the worldview marriage between LGBTQ and abortion. [00:06:03] Demonic evil conspires together in deceitful schemes that are now codified into civil laws, producing compliant citizens to absolutely illogical ideas like boys can be girls, two men can be married, kindergartners benefit from from pedophilia displays at Pride parades, and you can now get your testosterone on Tuesdays at Planned Parenthood. [00:06:32] Lgbtq, like abortion, are reigning idols of our day. And they depend upon each other because together, they all defy the created order that God has ordained, presenting a pattern with a universal purpose and a calling. [00:06:52] You know, for many parents that I talk to, parents of LGBTQ prodigals, they just feel absolutely confused by what is happening. [00:07:03] And oneism and twoism is here to help you cut through this fog, because it is very hard to respond to a problem you don't understand. [00:07:17] Well, at Planned Parenthood, car after car drives through this place of death like it were McDonald's on a Saturday morning. [00:07:25] And many are driven by abortion seekers with out of state license plates. You see, abortion has multiplied nationwide since the overturning of Roe v. Wade because of the abortion pill, which has effectively turned every mailbox into a little Planned Parenthood. [00:07:44] Let that settle in to your heart. [00:07:47] But the overturning of Roe v. Wade increased abortions in my state for an additional reason. [00:07:55] It's easier to get an abortion in North Carolina than in Georgia or Florida. And so out of state abortion seekers brave the drive and hail in droves. [00:08:06] And at Planned Parenthood, I can't help but to notice that most clients are African American, that the Planned Parenthood manager is an African American woman, and that most babies aborted in America are African American. [00:08:22] And that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger supported eugenics. [00:08:28] And just in case the dots aren't connecting, stationed just a few blocks away from Planned Parenthood on the same highway, I remind you you can see members of a kinist that's a racist and anti Semitic cult group that calls itself a church wearing sandwich boards that say this, the world was better when it was whiter. [00:08:56] Ironically, the African American women clients and the manager of Planned Parenthood align with the racists and collaborate to create the whitewashed world for which the Kinists advertise and advocate. [00:09:12] Conflicts arise on the sidewalk between pro life and abolitionists. [00:09:18] The abolitionists use microphones to preach fiery sermons audible over the blasting party music, testing the limits of the noise ordinance in Chapel Hill and rendering the inevitable citation from the police. [00:09:35] The abolitionists bear banners and flags portraying larger than life graphic pictures of bloody babies mutilated, dismembered and abandoned in body fragments and pieces that overflow Planned Parenthood trash bins. [00:09:53] And this prompts a few pro lifers to shield the eyes of the young children they thought it was safe to bring to a prayer walk. [00:10:02] In spite of, or because of their confrontational style, the abolitionists are actually the only group that day that persuaded any abortion seeking woman and the men who stood with them to stop, receive a Bible baby gifts, allow the abolitionists to escort them to a free ultrasound and depart from the death machines inside that building. [00:10:30] That is perfectly astonishing to me. I want to confess to you that in the time that I have served as a pro life sidewalk counselor, I have only had one car turn around and I had to go off script. [00:10:48] The guy rolled down his window and he said, oh, are you one of those pro lifers? And you're here to tell me that I shouldn't get an abortion because. And then he pretty much shared with me the gospel and he said, well, is that all you got? [00:11:02] And I handed him a tract and I said, well, I've got one more thing. He said, okay, let's hear it. [00:11:08] I said, have you read the Yelp reviews on this place? I Wouldn't spay my cat in that building. [00:11:14] All right? He turned around for that. [00:11:18] I don't think I'm going to make a career out of being a sidewalk counselor. [00:11:23] We stand on the grass in front of the abortion graveyard. We stand as close to the private property sign as we dare. [00:11:30] A local pastor preaches, but everything is so loud. The Planned Parenthood party music, the abolitionists at the microphones, the cars honking in cursing disapproval of pro life that you can barely make out the words of the preacher. [00:11:48] I can't even hear my own thoughts. [00:11:51] We finished praying through all of our prayer prompts for mothers to love their children, for fathers to protect their families, for abortion workers to repent, for babies to be saved and loved, and for all to come to Christ. [00:12:05] And we head back to the church parking lot and the pro life leader prays for us all. [00:12:12] He tells us that we have just stood closer to death than we probably like to think about. He thanks us for coming. Yes, and amen, I am thinking. [00:12:21] And then he offers this commentary. [00:12:25] He said, quote, abortion is not political. [00:12:29] It is the desperate cry for help from women in desperate situations. We need to keep praying that abortion would just be unthinkable. [00:12:40] My heart sank, and perhaps you think I was being faithless and cynical when the thought that came to my head was this. [00:12:51] How will it be unthinkable when we're not even thinking rightly about it? [00:12:57] This is not just a practice that desperate women choose. [00:13:03] This is one of the reigning idols of our day. [00:13:07] This is the theology of oneism. [00:13:12] How will it be unthinkable when the law promotes it and Planned Parenthood and Big Pharma depend upon its revenue? [00:13:22] It's not just a practice, it's a worldview. [00:13:26] Worldviews have consequences, and bad ones have casualties. [00:13:31] And if your son or daughter has been captured by these casualties and you have the right to know what fools have been promoting these ideas. [00:13:43] You know, 20 years ago, when I would name names like this, people thought I was doing this quaint thing called citing our sources, and now it's just anathema. [00:13:58] Well, how can I make sense of the out of state license plates, the predominance of lesbian abortion escorts, the female pastor who extols the virtue of her multiple abortions as blessings and sacraments and the preponderance of African American abortion seekers without closing the loop? [00:14:21] We Christians stand ready on the sidewalk with offers of help and rescue, but the women who saunter into the clinic for a routine third abortion despise our open Hand. [00:14:33] All of these people and situations that stand on the Planned Parenthood sidewalk reflect cosmological realities each and every one of us. [00:14:43] We reflect cultural forces, laws that bind the conscience and government schools that enforce anti Christian ethics through federally mandated programs. [00:14:55] We must understand theologically the situation before us if we are going to offer any real gospel rescue. [00:15:06] As Dr. Peter Jones and Truth Exchange have ably taught us, cosmological realities are organized by the concepts of oneism and two ism, or the way it is sometimes talked about today, binarism, organization or non binarism. [00:15:26] These are really the only two religions. [00:15:31] There aren't more than that. [00:15:33] You can't domesticate paganism and make it your friend. [00:15:39] And the problem is not political polarization and social movement zeal. [00:15:46] The problem is idolatry and its demand for worship and the hearts of our children. [00:15:58] And this problem is not new. [00:16:02] When the apostle Paul brought the gospel to Ephesus and Christianity took root, Christians became the kind of citizens Ephesus could not tolerate. [00:16:15] The gospel of Jesus Christ posed an immediate threat to the temple of Artemis, the ancient world's commercial and cultural center. And when the prosperous silversmith Demetrius realized the political consequence of Christian converts in his city, a riot ensued. Because that's what happens when truth comes to town. [00:16:38] And that riot is recorded in Acts 19:23, 32. [00:16:43] You know, these riots are great things and you can just, you can just tip your hat to them because truth ages well. [00:16:52] But first it causes a riot. [00:16:55] The riot caused great confusion, so much so that the rioters themselves did not know against what they protested. Quote. Now some cried out one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion. And most of them did not know why they had come together. [00:17:12] Acts 19:32. You see, all political protests against Christianity share this same sentiment, zeal without knowledge and truth about these two religions. [00:17:28] We need to remember that one is of the demons and the other is of the Lord God. [00:17:39] Now, why is it such a bad thing to cite some sources and tell you who these demon theologians are? [00:17:50] It's not bad for me. [00:17:53] I'm a housewife. I don't have a job to lose. Might be bad for somebody else, but I'm okay with it because you have the right to know. [00:18:04] So what did Paul do? [00:18:06] Well, a lot of things happened in that moment. First there was a riot, then there was a prison sentence, and then there was a prison release. And then after all of that, Paul said, may I speak to the crowd? And when he had the floor, he looked into the eyes of his accusers and he preached the gospel of repentance and belief. [00:18:29] A gospel whose implications cut to the absolute heart of this idol loving world. [00:18:37] And we live in an idol loving world too. [00:18:42] And we live in an idol loving world where homosexuality, feminism and abortion conspire to defy the creation ordinance which is found in Genesis 1:26 and 27. [00:18:57] So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. [00:19:13] These verses, also known as the creation ordinance, reveal five realities and and as I'm reading these five realities, in case you are uncertain, you will know you are not at a Gospel Coalition conference. [00:19:27] Number one, God's design of men and women is authoritative and it reflects the reality of twoism. [00:19:37] The binary that defines and makes distinct the sexes also provides roles. [00:19:45] Fruitful living God is not some crazy engineer who designed this pattern with no purpose. [00:19:55] He did not. He's not some crazy engineer who built a bridge and all of a sudden it falls into a lake. [00:20:02] It goes somewhere beautiful and good and noble. [00:20:07] Number two, God's design of men and women is noble and relational. [00:20:13] The stable twoist binary identities of male and female are finite. [00:20:20] There are only two identities for human beings to claim. I think Dr. Google this morning, I checked with him, I think he said that there were 79 this morning. It'll probably be a thousand before I finish talking. [00:20:33] But that's just not true. [00:20:38] Stable, noble and relational. [00:20:41] Quote, man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man in the Lord. Woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman and all things from God. [00:20:56] The implications of rejecting the twoism at the creation at the center of the creation ordinance for the oneism of gnostic modernity are enormous. [00:21:10] Consider just two things. Number one, the categorical error that separates sex and sexuality is one I'm supposed to just swallow wholesale. [00:21:23] And this has produced the modern category mistake of sexual orientation. Which is? Which is a 19th century category mistake. It's not true. [00:21:34] No one has a sexual orientation. [00:21:38] Everyone has a sin orientation. [00:21:43] And if that sin orientation desires homosexuality, it does not become an excuse for sin or a rationale for denying the repentance required of the gospel. [00:21:59] And number two, the invented identity of the gay man or the lesbian woman is a lie. There is no such thing as a gay man. There is no such thing as a lesbian woman. Okay? If your son or daughter has come to you and announced these things, you can know in your head there is no such thing. [00:22:17] A gay man or lesbian woman is a man or a woman with an indwelling sin from which he or she must repent and forsake and for which Jesus came to set us free. [00:22:32] A gay man or a lesbian woman is not a different kind of man or a different kind of woman. [00:22:38] There is no ontological foundation or creational reality being gay or lesbian. [00:22:45] A gay man is a man with an indwelling sin that is neither permanent nor ontological. [00:22:53] I sometimes have the privilege of speaking to large hostile audiences and I always remember to say that. And I end up with the most productive, heartfelt, prayerful conversations with people after that. Do not be afraid to tell the truth. Do not be afraid to start with the end in mind. Start so people know where you're going. That's what grownups do. And we need more grownups who are willing to talk to the world. [00:23:25] Number three. [00:23:27] God's creation ordinance is steadfast and it's permanent. [00:23:32] Twoism, a gender binary, posits that humanity is a single binary category. A man is a man. His is the soul of a man. His maleness is permanent and eternal. The same is true for women. And he will be a man in either hell or in the New Jerusalem. [00:23:53] I mention this because the promise of the resurrected and glorified body is a sweet recompense for all Christian detransitioners. [00:24:04] It is a promise of sweet joy and to know that you cannot mock God or his creation. Ordinance number four. [00:24:15] The creation ordinance reveals the rules and jobs given to Adam and Eve before and after the fall. [00:24:23] Marriage and work. [00:24:26] That means that all men and all women are called by the creation ordinance to marriage. [00:24:34] Now, we know that we live in a fallen world and we know that not everyone will be married, but that is the normative call. [00:24:42] That is normative. Singleness is not a sin. And single Christians can be single to the glory of God. But it's often used in a sinful way. If you've ever heard someone say, I have same sex attracted and therefore I'm called to singleness, you should call that person to repentance. And here's why that's called works righteousness. All right? You can't be right to the. You can't be right with God by adding a work to your sin. [00:25:15] If you experience same sex attraction, you're called to repentance. [00:25:19] You're called to repentance. [00:25:22] Marriage is the normative call. From creation and in marriage, God made us to do different and complementary things. [00:25:32] Husbands lead, protect and provide and wives submit, respect and love their husbands. They nurture their children and they keep the home. [00:25:45] And if that sounds shocking, that is simply because you have been tutored by too many feminist ninnies who believe, believe in third Wayism and you need to just detox. [00:25:59] God made us to work diligently in our separate stations, bending our minds and hearts to God's design. [00:26:09] And then finally, the Creation ordinance shows that the seeds of the gospel are in the Garden of Eden. The the Creation ordinance is central, not peripheral to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission. [00:26:26] If you unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament, as that heretic in Georgia Andy Stanley wants you to do, you don't have a gospel. [00:26:37] One of the things my husband Kent Butterfield said last week in his sermon is that false teachers create false Christs and false gospels. [00:26:48] You get to know who they are. [00:26:51] We're not keeping their dirty little secrets. [00:26:55] They're very bold about it. [00:26:58] We ought to be similarly bold. [00:27:01] The Bible is a unified biblical revelation and the law and the gospel have the same friends and the same enemies. [00:27:10] And only false teachers claim otherwise. [00:27:16] Number two, feminism. [00:27:19] Feminism violates the creation mandate by declaring that men and women are interchangeable and creating an unbiblical category distinction between sex and gender and sexuality. [00:27:33] Homosexuality rebels against the creation ordinance by rejecting the goodness of God's marriage mandate. [00:27:39] Abortion violates the creation ordinance by committing murder and denying the image of God in an unborn person by refusing the personhood and image bearing and soul owning reality of a baby within the womb. [00:27:54] Feminism, homosexuality and abortion have all shifted and this is important. [00:28:00] From social movements about which citizens can lobby and debate and discuss to the reigning idols of our day. [00:28:11] Idols demand worship and the sacrifice of your children. [00:28:18] Each has become codified into laws and culture, especially government, education. [00:28:23] And how do you know the difference between a social movement and an idol? [00:28:29] Check your heart. [00:28:30] You don't have to obey a social movement and you've never felt like you had to. [00:28:35] But idols, oh, they're here to tyrannize you. [00:28:39] They're here to steal your conscience. [00:28:44] Feminism asserts that women's independence from men is a social good to be protected and valued. [00:28:53] Biblical feminists assert that that the church and the gospel require a feminist rescue so that women can use their gifts and the church can be relevant to the world. [00:29:05] We are told that without feminism, women will have no rights, no voice, no dignity, no hope. [00:29:10] And all of that is blasphemy of the highest order. [00:29:18] Feminism began in England and the first significant feminist voice was heard in 1792 with Mary Wollstonecraft's the Vindication of the Rights of Women. [00:29:28] Wollstonecraft was a radical figure and a strong advocate of the bloody French Revolution. [00:29:35] While Wollstonecraft tied feminism to the radical and violent French Revolution, the United States brand of feminism took a completely different tack. [00:29:45] Susan B. Anthony, the second significant feminist voice, founded American feminism in 18 and American feminism immediately tied itself to the temperance movement and quickly gained legitimacy as a responsible way for American society to deal with the sins of drunken and irresponsible husbands. [00:30:07] European feminism differed from American feminism in another important way, its understanding of the role of children. [00:30:16] Mary Wollstonecraft, although radical to the core, was a mother. [00:30:23] Indeed, she died as a mother 11 days after giving birth to the woman who would carry on her radical politics and even more brilliant writing. [00:30:33] Mary Wollstonecraft was the mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and the 16 year old Runaway lover of the radical poet Percy Shelley, who was evicted from Oxford for his pamphlet in defense of atheism. [00:30:50] Mary Shelley was only able to marry Percy Shelley when Percy's first wife, Harriet, drowned herself and her eight month daughter, who was in the womb in the Serpentine river after Percy abandoned her. For Mary, American feminism replaced the bloody baby footprints of European feminism With no baby footprints at all. [00:31:17] American feminism, for the first time in history, invented a new category of personhood. [00:31:24] It glorified the single and unmarried woman, and it dignified those whose intellectual careers rejected motherhood as this optional liability, not a creational blessing and an honor. As Rebecca Merkel puts it, Quote, the career woman needed to remain married to her work, maintain a celibate existence, and have nothing to do with men or children. [00:31:53] For American feminism, temperance and suffrage became rallying cries for a worldview at war with creation. [00:32:04] But there is a third voice in feminism that we must reckon with, and that is of the American feminist Margaret Sanger, the mother of the abortion rights movement. [00:32:16] Sanger's dark and hateful worldview of both eugenics and abortion entered the bloodstream of American feminism and soon won the day. [00:32:28] Indeed, Sanger's first abortion clinic, which would later become Planned Parenthood, opened its doors in 1916, four years before American women won the right to vote. [00:32:42] You see, feminism valued death over votes. [00:32:48] But 20th and 21st century feminism took all of this one step further. [00:32:54] Take for example, the event in 2019 when radical Lutheran quote unquote, pastor Pretend pastor Nadia Bolz Weber presented the iconic and at that time, 90 year old abortion glorifying feminist Gloria Steinem with a gold sculpture made of rejected and discarded melted purity weave from women who now spurn their Christian upbringing and declare themselves faith deconstructors. [00:33:29] The sculpture featured a part of the woman's body. I cannot say in polite company. [00:33:37] Bolz Weber said she crafted the golden idol because she believes that biblical sexuality is dangerous to women and feminism must come to the aid of the gospel. [00:33:49] She said, quote, it needs to take down the church's teaching around sex, unquote, bolts. Weber went on in her interview, quote, this part of me is good for it and how I use it in the world. [00:34:09] Could that be any clearer? [00:34:16] I don't understand why we just can't call that heresy. I mean, like, it's full, it's just foolproof. [00:34:25] Number three, homosexuality. [00:34:29] I was 35 years old and I called myself a lesbian. [00:34:34] I lived in a lesbian relationship and I worked as an activist, tenured English professor from Syracuse University. [00:34:45] I was part of the first crop of this nation's tenured radicals. [00:34:53] And it was that year that I first encountered Romans 1. [00:35:00] How did I encounter Romans 1? Well, very simple. I was tenured and I was writing a book on the religious rite. [00:35:11] Basically, I wanted to understand why people like you wouldn't leave the person I used to be alone. [00:35:19] And I wrote an article and it got a lot of circulation, shall we say. [00:35:24] One of the people who read it was Ken Smith, a pastor who would go on to become my father and the Lord. [00:35:32] Ken Smith reached out to me, said, interesting article. I'd like to talk to you about it. I reached out back. I thought he'd be my unpaid research assistant for my book. I thought, this is awesome. [00:35:43] I'm going to talk to the real McCoy. [00:35:46] Came to his house the first day and he said, we have a few ground rules for how we're going to talk. [00:35:52] Great. I love ground rules. [00:35:54] He said, number one, I can accept to you as a lesbian, but I don't approve of. [00:35:59] Well, this was like 1996. Who would expect an actual legitimate evangelical Christian to approve? [00:36:07] That was fine with me. Today that would be considered hate speech under Obergefell. [00:36:12] Number two, he said, if you want to know why evangelicals think this way, you're going to have to read the Bible. Fantastic. I could have been the chairperson of over readers Anonymous. I love reading. [00:36:25] And number three, he said, I want you to know the difference between us. And I thought, oh no, here it goes, here it comes. [00:36:30] He's going to Say I'm going to hell and he's going to heaven. [00:36:33] And he'd be right. [00:36:36] But that's not what he said. He said, rosario, the difference between us is worldview. [00:36:41] You see, I, Ken Smith, believe that what is true determines what is ethical and valuable. [00:36:50] And you, Rosaria, gay rights activist, believe that what is ethical according to your gay rights world is what determines what is true and valuable. [00:37:01] And I thought that is the most fantastic articulation of the difference between postmodernism and everything else I've ever heard. [00:37:14] So I started reading the Bible and I encountered Romans 1. [00:37:21] And Romans 1 really hit me between the eyes. Because Romans 1 has these three exchanges, right? The exchange of truth for lies, the exchange of the worship of the Creator for the worship of creation, and the exchange of heterosexuality for homosexuality. And it defines homosexuality. That is, it defined me as suppressing the truth in righteousness. [00:37:49] Now, if you had asked me at the time why I was a lesbian, I would have told you simply I liked it. [00:37:54] I preferred it to dating men. [00:37:57] And lesbian sexuality just felt right to me, felt more comfortable. [00:38:01] The ideas, the idea that my feelings were the consequence of God giving me up to a debased mind would not have made any sense to me. Because in my atheistic world, God was imaginary and illusory and my feelings were authentic and sacro sect. [00:38:25] But praise be to God. I had a neighbor who cared about my soul more than he cared about being friends, being relevant, making me feel good. I mean, he did make me feel good. Ken and Floyd Smith made me feel great. [00:38:41] They taught me who I was. They taught me how to look into the Bible as a mirror. [00:38:49] They showed me how the Bible knew me better than I know myself. [00:38:55] They changed my life. [00:38:57] And as I ponder this today, I have now walked with the lord from for 27 years. [00:39:03] And those words from Romans 1 continue to impact my life. Those exchanges, the exchange that Dr. Jones talks about, that's where my life had to hinge. [00:39:18] It wasn't anywhere else. [00:39:20] It wasn't Christians being nice to me and agreeing that the church is not kind. It wasn't any of that nonsense. It was. It was Romans 1. [00:39:30] Today, I am no longer gay. I am no longer an atheist. The gospel brought a change in affection that set me free from the bondage of sin. [00:39:42] The process was mysterious. [00:39:46] The Bible got to be bigger inside me than I. [00:39:50] At first, I was just converted out of unbelief. I was not converted out of homosexuality. But once converted, I had to go to war with my homosexuality because all Christians do. [00:40:03] And my political allegiances changed, too, because they had to. [00:40:08] When I became a Christian, I had to face it squarely. Homosexuality is not part of creation or the created order. [00:40:16] God didn't create it and Jesus didn't redeem it. [00:40:20] And therefore I had to mortify it. [00:40:22] And when I did a self check on that, and I asked myself, rosaria, how do you feel about all of this? [00:40:29] The strangest sensation came over me. Quite frankly, I felt relieved. [00:40:35] I felt relieved that there's a God in the universe who is separate from me and knows better than I do. [00:40:44] Well, the Bible first confronted me in the welcoming living room of Cannon Floy Smith, a pastor and his wife who befriended me as their neighbor and shared the gospel. But Ken and Kenan Floyd Smith didn't stop there. [00:40:58] Almost within, I don't know, a couple of. I met with him for two years. I actually met with him for two years, and he never invited me to church. [00:41:07] And later in life, as he was quite old, I asked him, I said, ken, why did you never invite me to church? He said, I didn't trust you, and I felt I needed to protect my flock from you. [00:41:20] So I'm just, you know. He said, but I was willing to bring the church to you. [00:41:25] And that he did. [00:41:27] That he did. [00:41:29] Romans 1 plainly shows that homosexuality is an ethical outworking of sin. Original, actual, and besetting. [00:41:37] Adam's sin violated the terms of God's covenant and plunged all of his power posterity into depravity. [00:41:44] Romans 1:26 tells us that people give themselves over to homosexuality because they worship and serve the creation. [00:41:53] That means we worship ourselves. [00:41:56] That's one ism a Romans one world demands now that we worship LGBTQ and LGBTQ identity as though it were stable and logical. And some of you are being blackmailed by children and telling you this, but if it's stable and logical, why do they then go on to talk insanely about pregnant men and furries? [00:42:21] None of this is logical. [00:42:23] Do you really believe that being a soft presence, extending greater, untethered empathy in this moment is the rescue that people like the person I used to be would need? [00:42:36] Because that's what those feminist ninnies who are part of the YouTube apologetics establishment want you to believe? [00:42:43] All right. Pastor Smith just said, don't be a friend to ideas that undermine the gospel. [00:42:52] Don't be their passive friend and don't be their active friend. [00:42:58] So how are we to live? [00:43:00] Well, you're here at this conference, and I'm hoping that you will embrace and understand this that in order to do the next right thing for the prodigals in your life, you need to know what kind of war you are in. [00:43:16] You need to know what the problem is before you can solve it. You need to understand 1 ISM and 2 ISM. And you need to not manipulated and blackmailed by lies. [00:43:34] You need to know the times. [00:43:37] And then you can proclaim the gospel in the public sphere. [00:43:41] A gospel that must be told to neighbors and enemies, preached from pulpits and carried to the ends of the earth through missions and missionaries. [00:43:50] And we must proclaim these truths. And I hope you can tell I am a joyful warrior. Oh, am I getting eaten alive on the Internet? Absolutely. But you know what? I don't live on the Internet and neither do you. So you know a funny thing that happens when you get eaten alive on the Internet? Nothing really happens. So let's get on with life, shall we? [00:44:12] Truths must be proclaimed. Number one. The dignity of man and woman is that we are made in God's truth image. We must tell everyone that and that male and female are permanent categories, patterns with a purpose. Number two. The duty of every human being is to know Christ, to know true faith. 2 ism. We sang from Psalm 100 yesterday. We sang that we are to grow in knowledge and righteousness and holiness of truth. [00:44:46] Number three. We are. We are to proclaim the responsibility that allows us to face the facts. Without Christ, we have no hope. [00:44:57] Our condition is desperate. [00:45:00] Number four. [00:45:02] We are to face the fact that the. The maturity. We need to have the maturity to face the dangerous news that without crazy, without Christ, our future is hell, which is permanent, it is torment, it is eternal, and it is conscious. [00:45:21] And Hebrews 6 tells us that's an elementary principle. [00:45:28] So again, we, those who live on the Internet, are debating something that the Lord Jesus Christ calls One of the ABCs of the Christian family, faith. [00:45:39] Number five. [00:45:40] We need to trust the trustworthy news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners first. Timothy 1:15. [00:45:50] God made Christ to be sin so that we might become righteous in him. [00:45:59] He came into this world. It is a trustworthy saying. And Paul says, we are the foremost of sinners. And number six, we must profess the necessary condition that the effectual call of the Gospel requires a response. [00:46:19] Repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out. Acts 3:19. [00:46:25] Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And Acts 16:31. The Christian faith professes a truth that has a faithful content. [00:46:37] And the Gospel commands action not acquiescence. [00:46:43] It is not godly to be a soft presence here in Sodom. [00:46:49] It is not godly. It is cowardly. [00:46:53] Christians do not need to rebrand their their faith so that heathens tolerate it. [00:47:00] Forgive me, but I am not ecumenical. [00:47:04] My intent is to follow the faithful confessors. [00:47:09] We profess, confess and practice our faith because indeed we are, and joyfully so, the church militants before we can be the Church Triumphant. Thank you.