September 1, 2017 @ 8:00 AM
I’ve never written anything with more trepidation over being misunderstood and maligned than this article. I know thousands are suffering in the city of Houston. I also know that those suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey are from all walks of life. This unprecedented hurricane has proven indiscriminate in its victimization of every age, race, religion, class, and income. Truly, as Christians, our hearts should go out and our prayers should go up for the residents of Houston.
Unlike most Americans, I believe God pays close attention to what is going on in our world. I also believe He metes out His judgment accordingly. While most Americans disdain any notion of divine retribution in our day, as well as anyone daring to suggest it, I believe my belief is substantiated both by God’s Word and His immutability. Since God is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), His use of natural disasters in executing His judgments is no less plausible in our present-day world than it was in biblical times. Furthermore, today, just like yesterday, everyone in a particular place upon which God’s judgment falls suffers its consequences to some degree or another, regardless of their age and culpability.
Ever since Hurricane Harvey, which is being called a 1,000 year flood event of unprecedented scale, wobbled in off the Gulf of Mexico and sat down over the city of Houston, deluging that city with unprecedented precipitation—trillions of gallons of water—I’ve not been able to stop thinking about something that occurred in that city in October of 2014.
As I explicitly point out in my book, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: The Compelling Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage, the legalization of same-sex marriage in America is not what its proponents have pretended it to be, a benign “live and let live” proposal. Instead, it is a most dastardly deed with the most malignant of consequences for our country and all true Christians within it. Not only is it the final nail in our country’s coffin, serving as a sure sign of our spiritual reprobation, but it will also result in the political gagging of all Gospel preaching by turning sin into a civil right and outlawing all spoken opposition against it.
On October 15, 2014 the city of Houston made the most brazen attempt to date to encroach upon the religious freedom of Gospel preachers in America. On that day the city of Houston issued subpoenas demanding pastors to turn over sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity, or Annise Parker, the city’s lesbian mayor at the time. Houston pastors who refused to do so were threatened with criminal prosecution for contempt of court. The obvious intention of this extraordinary overreach to regulate freedom of speech in Houston pulpits was twofold. First, it was a scouring of pastor’s sermons for evidence to indict them for violating Houston’s new non-discrimination ordinance, which, among other things, allows men to use the ladies room and vice versa. Second, it was an obvious attempt to intimidate pastors into silencing their opposition to the radical gay agenda in the city of Houston, Texas.
The Bible clearly teaches us that God’s plan within our world today is for His church to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Christ’s Great Commission is the church’s mission; it is our mandate and marching orders. It is, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the young minister Timothy, God’s desire for everyone everywhere to have an opportunity to hear the truth of salvation and to come to the Savior, Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:1-6). Furthermore, according to this important passage, it is the church’s God-given mission to testify of Christ and the government’s God-given task to keep society free and peaceful so that the church’s heralding of the Gospel will go unhindered.
Why, of all cities, did Hurricane Harvey set down on the city of Houston. Why did this unprecedented Hurricane deluge this city of all cities in a way reminiscent of God’s fury in flooding the earth in the days of Noah. Could it be because this American city has made the most brazen attempt to date to thwart God’s plans and purposes, to hinder the church’s fulfilling of Christ’s Great Commission, and to silence the preaching of the Gospel in our land? Just asking.