Hope for Today is the radio ministry outreach of Jim Shaddix and Riverside Baptist Church in Denver, where he is senior pastor. You can reach Hope For Today via email at HFT@riversidebaptist.com.

Friday, August 01, 2008

On today’s broadcast, we’ll hear the concluding message in our series “Perversion of the Picture – Distorting God’s Design.” Over the past several broadcasts, featured speaker Dr. Jim Shaddix has been focusing on the break-through or triumph one can have in overcoming the homosexual lifestyle. Today, he brings three very important guidelines to those who desire Christ-like victory over sinful behavior; enlist the help of other believers, build safeguards into your life, and give the process plenty of time. Sermon is available to watch or listen or download as an MP3 here:

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Hope_For_Today/archives.asp?bcd=8/1/2008

See links below for more sermons in Shaddix’s series:

Americans For Truth Press Release
www.americansfortruth.org

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631.

TAKE ACTION: Contact WTTW online or through their main switchboard at 773-583-5000; ask for WTTW CEO/President is Dan Schmidt and/or Programming Director Dan Soles. Or you can call WTTW’s “Member Services” phone number at 773-509-1111, ext. 6 (between 9-5:00 Central); hit “6” and you will get a live person; kindly communicate your opposition to WTTW’s pro-homosexual programming and the blatant anti-Christian bigotry that is part of it. Click HERE to find the PBS TV station in your area to check if they are engaged in the same “Gay Pride Month” biased programming and let us know what you find: americansfortruth@comcast.net.

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AFTAH Condemns WTTW, PBS for Airing Anti-Christian Programming Celebrating Homosexuality During ‘Gay Pride Month’

NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today accused the Chicago public TV station WTTW, and by extension the Public Broadcasting System, of using taxpayer monies to celebrate homosexuality and worse, air programs that displays flagrant anti-religious bigotry during “Gay Pride Month.”

“It is unconscionable that WTTW would show such blatant disregard for its faith- and tradition-minded viewers that it would use anti-Christian programs celebrating homosexuality for its fund-raising telethons,” LaBarbera said. “Public television must be impartial on controversial moral issues. We call on WTTW and PBS to balance their pro-homosexual programming with faith-based educational material from the other side, or stop it altogether.”

Last night (and apparently on June 1), WTTW used the documentary, “The Power of Harmony,” featuring the Dallas-based Turtle Creek Chorale, as a fund-raiser. It included:

• The homosexual men’s choir singing the song, “I Ain’t Afraid,” which contains the following refrain denigrating faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims: “I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus, I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your God”;
• Repeated assertions that God made homosexuals that way and that portray Christians who disagree as hateful, ignorant or prejudiced. Said one homosexual man’s mother: “God created homosexuality. It’s just part of a person.” Historic Christian teaching holds that homosexual acts are sinful but that this behavior pattern – like other sinful lifestyles – can be overcome through faith in Christ;
• Testimonies by bitter “gay” men who despise and attack the religion of their upbringing because it does not sanction their lifestyle;
• A homosexual male couple adopting a Guatemalan baby.

Homosexual smear campaign backfires; some cry out “Sally for Governor!”

By Peter LaBarbera

Yesterday’s “Rally for Sally” at the Oklahoma statehouse to support State Rep. Sally Kern (R) was an amazing success, and we will have several reports on it. By all accounts, more than a thousand people turned out — the Daily Oklahoman newspaper reports 1,500 — and people were turned away from the building once the rally began.

CLICK HERE to watch a short DAILY OKLAHOMAN VIDEO-STORY on the “Rally for Sally” [you may have to click on the video story, “Free Speech Rally for Sally”]; and click HERE to read an extended Baptist Messenger interview with Kern about the controversy. You can write Kern at sallykern@okhouse.gov.

It appears as though the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund’s smear campaign against Kern — their YouTube video left out the part of her speech where she said she tries to “love everybody,” even as they charged her with contributing to hate-violence — has only made her one of the most popular politicians in Oklahoma. Although Sally disavowed any interest in running for statewide office, the calls for “Sally for Governor” and “Governor Kern” were heard repeatedly yesterday from her enthusiastic backers.

 NOTE: Rep. Blunt penned a column on the majority’s ENDA legislation this week for Human Events, available HERE. His speech on the floor of the House can be viewed on YouTube by clicking HERE. Call 202-225-6536 or go to his website HERE to thank Congressman Blunt for standing up for religious freedom and educating the nation on how ENDA will undermine it. If we had more Congressmen like Blunt, our freedoms would not be in jeopardy.

Majority’s ENDA Bill Takes Dead Aim at Religious Freedom

Legislation creates conflict between one’s right to religious freedom, and another’s right to sue you for exercising it

WASHINGTON – House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) issued the following statement today after Democrats failed to secure a veto-proof majority on the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would erode one’s right to religious freedom by strengthening another’s right to sue you for practicing it:

“The structure of the bill before us today is eerily similar to legislation we’ve seen from this majority all year: a favorable, purposefully misleading title applied to a bill that’s poorly assembled and oblivious to its own consequences. 

“In this case, the so-called ‘Employment Non-Discrimination Act’ creates a legal quagmire for employees who practice, or even acknowledge, their religious beliefs – depending on where they happen to work, and subject to judicial interpretation. In the process, it erodes a basic, fundamental right bestowed upon us by our Creator – and a right guaranteed to every American under the U.S. Constitution.

“As a former president of a Baptist college in Missouri, supporters of this bill have been quick to assure me that its most onerous provisions would not apply to that school. But no such exemption is available for Christian bookstore owners, as an example, or any other small business in which people of faith and deep religious conviction are relied upon as an integral part of the workforce.

“Thankfully, Republicans secured the votes necessary this afternoon to uphold a presidential veto. It’s my hope now that this Congress can move forward on the real priorities affecting American families. Though a clear boon to trial lawyers, this bill does not meet that standard.”

NOTE: Rep. Blunt penned a column on the majority’s ENDA legislation this week for Human Events, available HERE. His speech on the floor of the House can be viewed on YouTube by clicking HERE.

By Sonja Dalton

Do not be deceived:

• Ruth (a woman) was married to Naomi’s son (a man) until he died — ie, Ruth was in a heterosexual marriage with a man who died, not in a “committed same-sex relationship” with her mother-in-law. Maybe Mr. Miner and Mr. Connoley should finish reading the Old Testman book of Ruth to learn that, after being widowed, she re-married her kinsman-redeemer, Boaz (a man), and that the natural offspring procreated by their heterosexual marital sex is included in the lineage of Christ. The story of Ruth has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.
• The word in Matthew 8:5-13 for the centurion’s servant is “pai’ß” which is rendered servant because that is what it means. End of story.
• Homosexuality, like all sin, is primarily a spiritual disorder. Here is the “Gay-Friendly” Gospel: With sacrificial love for all sinners, Jesus Christ came as a physician to heal the spiritually sick — and He still offers healing today, including to homosexuals. But He demands repentance from sin, not self-justification while continuing in sin.

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The following is excerpted from Reading the Bible the Gay-Friendly Way, by Will Kilburn, published Nov 26, 2006, by Boston Globe:

In the battle over gay rights and same-sex marriage, those who oppose both often cite Biblical passages which, they believe, clearly state that homosexuality is wrong.

Trying to rebut this view is a movement led by people who are both gay and Christian who say that the Bible is on their side.

“Most people think that the attitude of gay Christians is, ‘Who cares what the Bible says?’ when in reality, we care deeply what the Bible says,” said the Rev. Jeff Miner , pastor of the Jesus Metropolitan Community Church , a gay-friendly congregation in Indianapolis. He led a forum on the topic last weekend at Arlington Street Church. “We think there are a lot of powerful, affirming things that are in the Bible that have been ignored.”

Those affirming messages were detailed by Miner and forum co-leader John Tyler Connoley in their 2002 book, “The Children are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships.” The book served as the text for the forum, sponsored by an array of gay-friendly local church groups, which drew about 200 people.

Most of the forum was devoted to passages that the authors say treat homosexuals and heterosexuals equally. In the Old Testament, claim the authors, Ruth’s covenant with Naomi, which includes the memorable phrase, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live,” actually refers to a committed same-sex relationship. They also offered a different interpretation of a story that appears in both Matthew and Luke, in which a centurion asks Jesus to heal a man who is typically identified — misidentified, says Miner — as the centurion’s servant.

“That story’s often preached about in straight churches,” said Miner, but “nobody bothers to mention that the Greek word used to describe the sick man is the word used in the ancient world to describe your same-sex partner.”

Both Miner and Connoley said they had to leave the relatively conservative churches of their childhoods when they came out as gay, Connoley spending two years in so-called “ex-gay therapy,” in which homosexuality is treated as a mental disorder. Similar conflicts, both internal and external, were recounted by some of the organizers of the forum.

“My primary goal was to provide an opportunity for people who are gay, bisexual, transgender, to come and be affirmed and to be loved,” said Sam Gloyd , 60, an Arlington Street Church congregant who came out as gay when he came to Boston for graduate school 20 years ago.

Gloyd says he got the idea for the forum partly in response to a conference held in Boston last year by the Colorado Springs-based group Focus on the Family . Called “Love One Out,” the event, held at nearby Tremont Temple Baptist Church, offered instruction to families on how to convert a gay relative back to heterosexuality. While some protested on the street, Gloyd chose to go inside and hear what the group had to say, a move that turned painful a few hours later. “I wasn’t just traumatized, I was re-traumatized, because for 40 years of my life I lived this trauma of feeling like I was unacceptable to God,” he recalled. “So it was inspiration from that conference that sort of spurred me on to say we need to offer some alternative voice to this hateful message that’s masked in love.”

That alternative voice doesn’t sway the Rev. Ray Pendleton, pastor of Tremont Temple Baptist Church, where the “Love One Out” event was held.

“The Biblical view of sexuality is pretty clear,” he said. “It says that genital sexuality is to be expressed between a man and woman in the context of marriage, period.” Pendleton was careful to make a distinction between homosexual orientation and the practice itself. “When you look at what the Bible teaches, the Bible doesn’t talk about orientation; the Bible talks about behavior.”

Continue reading at Boston Globe…

Matt Barber on MSNBC!

Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues, recently appeared on MSNBC Live debating Harry Knox from Human Rights Campaign on comments made by Rev. Al Mohler that there is a biological basis for homosexuality. Click HERE to watch!

From Ex-“Gays” Say Science Can’t Change Morality, by Michael Foust, published Mar 20, 2007, by Baptist Press:

The leaders of two ex-gay ministries say that even if scientists someday find a biological basis for homosexuality, such behavior will nonetheless be immoral and the Bible’s condemnation of it will still stand.

Tim Wilkins (pictured left) of Cross Ministry and Alan Chambers (pictured right) of Exodus International were responding to comments by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr., whose online article about a possible biological basis for homosexuality caused a small media storm.

Both Wilkins and Chambers say they agree with Mohler’s main point — that a biological basis would do nothing to change the discussion over homosexuality’s immorality. Wilkins and Chambers formerly were homosexual. The two men e-mailed their responses to Baptist Press.

“Many people, including evangelicals, mistakenly believe that if a ‘gay gene’ or a hormonal factor is discovered, such news would mean homosexuality is natural and thus acceptable,” said Wilkins, who is married and has three daughters. “But … natural is not normal.”

Chambers, who is married and has a son and a daughter, agreed.

“Science will never trump the word of God,” the president of Exodus International said. “We already know that we are physically, biologically and spiritually fallen creatures, so in a sense finding a biological link to homosexuality wouldn’t be a huge surprise. However, susceptibility isn’t the same as inevitability. Our genetics aren’t a tyranny over us.

“Just because something is genetic doesn’t make it moral, optimal or healthy,” Chambers added. “Research has suggested that there is a biological link to alcoholism and kleptomania, but as a society we aren’t advocating for the rights of alcoholics or those with a compulsion to steal. For that matter, neither are those who are battling those addictive behaviors.”

From Was It Something I Said?, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Mar 16, 2007:

Well, never doubt the power of the media. My recent article on homosexuality ignited a firestorm in the public square. Why? We may never know — but the controversy represents both a challenge and an opportunity.Several thoughts:

I must admit much frustration about the way many in the media have handled the issue. Headlines proclaimed “Seminary President Says Babies Born Gay” — something I neither believe nor said. Other articles and reports claimed that I suggested that homosexuality may be genetic in origin and that genetic therapies should be used to create customized and corrected babies. I never even mentioned genetic therapies or germ-line experiments, and I am adamantly opposed to genetic therapies of such a sort — real or hypothetical. Reading these reports and headlines was a painful and exasperating experience. If I believed those things attributed to me, I would not agree with myself and would condemn myself…

God’s condemnation of sin is not determined by science, but by God’s Word. The Bible could not be more clear — all forms of homosexual behavior are expressly condemned as sin. In so doing the Bible uses its strongest vocabulary and places this condemnation in the larger context of the Creator’s rightful expectation of our stewardship of the sexual gift. All manifestations of homosexuality are thus representations of human sinfulness and rebellion against God’s express will. Nothing can alter this fact, and no discovery in science or any other human endeavor can change God’s verdict…

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 the Apostle Paul condemns an entire list of sins, including explicit references to homosexuality. Then he reminds the church, “such were some of you.” The complete text reads: “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” [1 Corinthians 6:11]. God brings glory to himself through the salvation of sinners — and Paul includes homosexuality in that list…

Continue reading at Dr. Mohler’s Blog…