August 8, 2011, michaelbray Speech - Lawful and Unlawful,

ELCA Apostates and the Persecution of Horsley

May 7, 2010

ELCA Apostates and the Persecution of Horsley

Neal Horsley, the obscure Georgia gubernatorial candidate, was arrested on March 10 and charged with “terroristic threats.” One of his volunteer campaign assistants, Jonathan O’Toole, a truck driver who was offering a few day’s help on the campaign, was arrested the next day and charged with the same crime. Horsley is out on bond; O’Toole is still in but due out any day with a $20,000 bond. They are forbidden to communicate with each other or Elton John.

What is this about? Horsley, in the course of his campaign (the center of which is the outlawing of abortion and sodomy) responded to a recent magazine article in which celebrity Sir Elton John declared the Son of God, Jesus, to be a sodomite (“a gay man”). Horsley held up a sign with the biblical verse, Hebrews 9:27 written next to the words, “Elton John Must Die.” While holding the sign, he explained that, as the Biblical text declares – an especially apropos message to modern man who believes in no life beyond this 60-90 years-long physical one – everyone must die because of sin and that after this death comes a judgment. It is this judgment as a consequence of sin, for which physical death is the only the first part of the consequences of sin, which Neal Horsley was particularly addressing with his message for Elton John and the public to whom he was displaying the sign.

What is behind the arrests? It seems to be that the powers of Atlanta do not like Horsley’s distinctive campaign theme: He will put an end to legalized sodomy and abortion in Georgia. And, perhaps explanatory of the reason the state of Georgia, like the rest of the nation, has strayed so far gone from its Christian legal and ethical foundations, the churches have themselves become a part of the pagan counter-culture.

As the church goes, so goes the nation. The church is compared to salt and if it is not doing its job it is useless and may as well be discarded. The people of God are obligated by their master to exert an influence of good upon society and sanctify the culture by reforming it. The people of God are compared to salt and light to illustrate the good influence that this Holy Community is to have upon the world. The world would be a hellish place without the presence of God’s Spirit operating in His people. Indeed, if the people of God are not doing as they are designed to do, they may as well be thrown out, discarded (Matt.4:13). The fate of God’s people, when they fail to obey Him and season a culture, is punishment: oppression, persecution, and exile.

Last August the Evangelical Lutheran Church (the third largest Protestant denomination in the country, following the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodists) demonstrated such “tastelessness” when it formally decided to approve “eligible Lutherans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships” to serve as clergy. Annually the Lutherans hold a Convention to address issues and report on the activities of the ELCA churches. The Convention of 2009 was to be held at the Minneapolis Convention Center and the ELCA was also using Central Lutheran, a member church located across the street, and had set up several tents to house various booths and displays.

It appeared to the reasonable observer of human events that a divine commentary was expressed via a particular meteorological “Act of God.” It was during this national gathering on August 19, 2009 at 2 p.m., according to the printed schedule, that the fifth session was to begin at which time the main item was “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue at hand was whether the practicing of homosexual behavior should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry. (No longer a no-brainer in this age of liberation from Truth claims.)

Kevin Dau, an eyewitness, reported seeing a wide funnel moving over downtown Minneapolis a few moments before the session was to begin. The tornado touched down just south of downtown and followed 35W straight towards the city center crossing I-94 into downtown.

Minneapolis is home to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. The popular (and orthodox) writer/pastor/theologian writes: “On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected . . . a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts—most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city.”

Piper further reports: “The first buildings on the downtown side of I-94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two . . . and then lifts.”

If would be presumptuous to assume that every disaster is a divine judgment upon particular sins of a particular time and place or that the absence of judgment in a given region indicates righteousness in the lives of the inhabitants. However, Christian theology does teach that God judges nations and persons in time and history with particular instruments (weather, men, or beasts) of His choosing and that these chastisements or judgments can be, at times, recognizable to others as such. Piper offered his interpretation of the timely “act of God” in Minneapolis.

The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners. (See Piper’s blog at http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1965_the_tornado_the_lutherans_and_homosexuality)

But, true to the spirit of apostasy, the zealous drive to flout the Law is a relentless one. Nine months later in Atlanta, St. John’s Lutheran reinstated Schmeling who been removed from the denominations clergy roster in 2007 for violating the already-liberal church policy which had permitted professing homosexually-oriented pastors to remain employed as pastors as long as they abstained from homosexual acts. Pastors Davin Easler and Bradly Schmeling took on the role of conscientious (or just sensuous?) objectors and engaged in putatively principled ecclesiastical disobedience. “Justice for sodomites!” might have been the cry of these grand 21st century reformers.

Two weeks after the Minneapolis decision to approve of pastors practicing sodomy, the candidacy committee of the ELCA Southeastern Synod in Atlanta approved Schmeling’s request for reinstatement. St. John’s had acted in defiance of the ELCA’s policy (changed, i.e. further perverted) in August and had retained the denominationally disapproved pastor.

A May 4 AP report cites Schmeling’s response to his reinstatement, “I’m happy for the many people who always hoped to be ordained as pastors now have an open pathway before them,” he said.

Indeed, the way of decadence has been plodded for many years in Atlanta. Most notably, the city leaders trampled and smothered the efforts of Operation Rescue 22 years ago when thousands of Christians came to town to block abortuary doors the summer of 1988 and proclaim the sacredness of humanity and the sexual reproduction of the same. Civil rights icon and newly enthroned Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young presided over the abuse of the champions of the new civil rights movement for the sake of “the least of these,” Christ’s brethren. He was joined by the Jesse Jackson and other traitors to the cause of justice. Theses frauds were rebuked out by some who had eyes to see, such as Atlanta City Council member, Josea Williams. This close associate of Martin Luther King lamented: “We who were the leaders of the movement in the ’50s and ’60s are now political leaders. And we are doing the same thing to these demonstrators that George Wallace and Bull Connor did to us.”

It seems that once a city, a people, rejects the Truth and purity when it is clearly placed before them, the more fervently they embrace lies and decadence and suppress the Truth

The Truth is the Law of God which holds that mankind is created in God’s image – that human beings have souls, moral standing, and powers of reasoning and spiritual introspection – and that a man and a woman may be united in a holy contract or covenant by which they may produce children and form a family. Human beings may not be abused or destroyed but for punishment for crimes. And sexual activity is reserved for marriage.

This fundamental assumption concerning the relationship between Law and culture has been cast aside along with the God of western culture. His Law was the foundation of the common law and codes of our own American colonies and states. And it is the current severance of His Law from the civil arena in the name of a juris-impudence which asserts a bizarre doctrine of separation of divine Law from society in the name of misconstrued “separation of church and state” dogma which has resulted in the current moral and cultural free fall into national decadence. And that pursuit of decadence.

And the churches of God, which have bowed to the charge that they must be silent in matters of law and government – their province being restricted, it is supposed, to the “souls of men.” – have not countered this errant interpretation of American history along with the false teaching regarding the duties of the churches of God in society.

So when a prophet, rising and speaking to the issues of the day and addressing them with the Law of God, is rejected and abused, the churches of God respond as persons struck with a spirtual, going about their own world, happily unaware or disinterested in the plight of those weird, boisterous, obnoxious, (in a word) despised street preachers. He is rejected by the conservatives because he treads into the forbidden realm of Politics; he is rejected by the liberals because he is offensive in his claim that people need to get “saved.” He is viewed as an uneducated babbler holding onto a quaint, if not offensive, religion of “intolerance” and “exclusion.”

Pastor Billy Ball of Primrose Baptist Church 50 miles south of Atlanta has led by example, and approved of other members who do the same, and preached against sodomy in course of preaching the gospel. Along with the sign featured below, church members have featured signs which say “Repent ye, and believe the gospel. Mark 1:15” and “The sodomite lifestyle produces vile affections, ungodly lust, reprobates.” (Chelsea Schilling, “Faceoff! Cops versus preachers on public sidewalk,” World Net Daily, August 27, 2009)

Chris Pettigrew told World Net Daily, “There were four of us to begin with. We weren’t preaching with any amplified sound . . . Basically, as soon as we got out of the cars and started toward the sidewalk, Manchester city police officers showed up and asked us if we had a parade permit.”

He continued, “We did not have a parade permit, and we informed them that we had no plans for obtaining a parade permit because we weren’t in a parade.”

The “Atlanta Christian community,” as modern reporters might refer to them – or “establishment Christian churches,” in counter-cultural Sixtiesish lingo – has been silent; rather, complicit – as the suppression of the messengers of the Gospel proceeds. Some of those presently on the stage displaying this suppression of the Truth by their own suffering at the hands of the intolerant anti-Christ political powers are Neal Horsley and Jonathan O’Toole.

They continue to undergo prosecution for declaring that a public figure – one Elton John – who publicly declares himself to be a practicing sodomite, will face the judgment at the hands of the very One, the Lord Jesus, whom John declares to be a sodomite as he himself is. More specifically, Horsley, along with his campaign assistant, have announced that John, like all of humanity, will die because of sin (the willful violation of the Law of God) and that judgment from the Almighty does not end with physical death as is evidenced for all to observe from day to day in human societies. Rather, the unrepentant John, whose damnable state is indicated by his blasphemous speech concerning the Lord, Sovereign, King, President, Dictator and Judge Jesus, will suffer a death beyond the observable physical one which even the Godless materialist (as to philosophy) cannot deny. He must die both physically and spiritually and suffer judgments beyond his earthly existence – unless he, yet, repents and calls upon the mercy of the One he has blasphemed, the Lord and God of the universe, Jesus the Messiah and Savior of all who call upon Him.

This message which the Georgia gubernatorial candidate declares is hated by the Godless of the land, and therefore Neal Horsley and Jonathan O’Toole are vigorously opposed by many and ignored by those who have abandoned this land to anti-Christ churches, pastors, and political rulers.

Cross and Flag Burning Remembering the Harford County Detention Center