The Scottish Parliament has launched a public consultation on whether to redefine marriage in order that people of the same sex may marry. The consultation will run until December 9. That such a consultation is being held at all would have astonished people 20 years ago, and it shows how rapidly a backsliding nation can descend to the depths of depravity. What might another 20 years bring at this rate?
Marriage is defined by the Bible in the formula: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen 2:24). This definition cannot be brushed aside as “Old Testament”, because it is cited by Christ in connection with marriage and divorce (Mt 19:5). The relevant point here is that “He which made them at the beginning made them male and female” in order that there might be such a thing as marriage (v 4). Two men or two women cannot marry in biblical terms precisely because they are the same sex. “Homosexual marriage” is a contradiction in terms. Either there will be no wife in the “union” or else there will be no husband; and either way there will be no children, which is another purpose of marriage (Mal 2:15). Furthermore, there can be no purity in the “union”: “marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Heb 13:4), but the homosexual bed is declared to be “abomination” (Lev 18:22).
Marriage is intended by God to illustrate the union between Christ and His Church. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and wives are to submit themselves to their husbands as the Church is subject to Christ (Eph 5:22-25). Perhaps this is why people who do “not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom 1:28) so often have this symbol of the love between Christ and His Church taken away from them. Choosing to live in a world without Christian love, they are left to stumble in a world where there is by all accounts little natural love but mainly “men . . . burning in their lust one toward another” (v 27).
We pray that the moves will be defeated and that God will soon turn our nation back to a knowledge of the love between Christ and His Church.
DWBS
Abortion in the UK
Official figures show that, in 2010, 12 826 abortions took place in Scotland. In other words, 12 826 unborn human beings had their lives taken away, which is a rate of 12.3 per 1000 women aged 15-44. And in England and Wales for the same year the rate was even worse, 17.5 per 1000 women, making a total of 189 574 abortions for that year. Perhaps even more startling is the fact that 34% of these women had a previous abortion. The corresponding figure for Scotland is 28%.
The killing of a young child creates outrage, but the biblical command, “Thou shalt not kill”, applies, not only to human beings who have attained independent existence, but also to the unborn. The figures just quoted show that Britain has a warped moral compass.
There is a sad unwillingness on the part of MPs to do anything about this slaughter of the unborn. Most recently, on September 7, MPs rejected a bid by Nadine Dorries to change the law, in order to stop the National Health Service paying abortion providers to give counselling to women considering an abortion. The Government was only willing to consult on improving such services. Even Mrs Dorries, though she has done a lot of good work in seeking to restrict abortion, described herself in the debate on September 7 as “pro choice”; in other words, she approves of abortion, while seeking to lower the age limit at which this ungodly procedure is available.
Clearly Britain is in dire need of having its moral compass recalibrated through being brought into contact with the law of God.
Free Church of Scotland in Aberdeen
On Sabbath, August 14, no morning service was conducted in the Bon Accord Free Church of Scotland congregation in Aberdeen, nor had one been intimated. Instead, a joint meeting was held with various non-Free Church congregations in the Bon Accord building. The character of this praise meeting can be gathered from the cartwheel performed by the person leading it as he entered the meeting. A few Sabbaths later in the same congregation, a man who was called on to pray proceeded to read his prayer from a card, incorporating into it a poem.
How quickly such unbiblical and unspiritual conduct is coming in, and how different it is from the Word of God: “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer” (1 Pet 4:7). DWBS