How Did We Get Where We Are?: A Cultural And Biblical Analysis Of The Sexual Revolution

By George Scipione

Director of Biblical Counseling Institute, Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary

[The substance of this paper was given at the 2015 Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary Biblical Counseling Institute Conference entitled “Sex, Sin, and Salvation: God’s Grace in a Fallen World”.]

God is the great historian. He is the one who has planned history; He is the one who providentially carries out history; He is the only one with full knowledge of history.

Nonetheless, the faithful churches of the present day cannot remain silent in evaluating the present historical moment. Searching questions must be asked: Where is the church today? Where is society today? What has the church contributed to the present societal situation? In the climate of the 21st century, any faithful analysis will present a gloomy answer to these questions. As Robert Bork has observed, society finds itself as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.[1] The tragedy of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in particular the tragedy of straying from Biblical sexual ethics, has forcefully reached modern-day society. Today’s culture is reeling from Satanic opposition on the issue of sexuality and people’s identities.

The evidence for this opposition is endless. The gay 90s at the end of the 1800s led to the roaring 20s and the flappers, which led to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, with its sensuality and free sex. Today, the LGBT agenda has been enforced by the 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that legalizes gay marriage. The years since that decision have only further revealed the onward movement of the progressive LGBT agenda.

What has brought this sexual transformation about? This paper seeks to answer this question in reference to the progression – or regression – in sexual morality in the Western world today.

A Heritage Given

To understand these developments, it is necessary to analyze the religious history of the western world. First of all, one must realize that the likes of the United States and Canada were never Christian nations. They are certainly not like covenanting Scotland of the 1600s. They are not even Zambia of 1991, where inaugurated president Frederick Jacob Titus Chiluba proclaimed, “I declare, today, that I submit myself as president to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I likewise submit the government and the entire nation of Zambia to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”[2]

Nevertheless, even while these western powers maintain no true Christian identity, Biblical influence on the United States and Canada has been real. There are Bible verses on public buildings. There are paid chaplains in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States Congress. Moving further back in history, an even more pervasive religious influence can be seen. The national anthem of the United States emerges as a case study here. Francis Scott Key wrote those famous words, initially entitled The Defense of Fort McHenry, on September 13, 1814, during the War of 1812, when he saw Fort McHenry under attack.[3] Recall the well-known opening lyrics of this anthem:

O say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

These opening words are familiar. But consider how Key’s poem ends:

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto- “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave![4]

The final stanza offers a significant divine perspective. It speaks of “the heav’n rescued land” and proclaims, “Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation” in this national anthem of the United States. There is no doubt as to the God to which Key was referring.

In case there is any doubt as to Key’s theological perspective, another hymn of his, Lord, with Glowing Heart I’d Praise Thee, offers fuller perspective:

Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee,
For the bliss Thy love bestows,
For the pard’ning grace that saves me,
And the peace that from it flows.
Help, O God, my weak endeavor;
This dull soul to rapture raise:
Thou must light the flame, or never
Can my love be warmed to praise.

Praise, my soul, the God that sought thee,
Wretched wanderer, far astray;
Found thee lost, and kindly brought thee
From the paths of death away;
Praise, with love’s devoutest feeling,
Him Who saw thy guilt-born fear,
And the light of hope revealing,
Bade the blood-stained cross appear.

Praise thy Savior God that drew thee
To that cross, new life to give,
Held a blood-sealed pardon to thee,
Bade thee look to Him and live.
Praise the grace whose threats alarmed thee,
Roused thee from thy fatal ease;
Praise the grace whose promise warmed thee,
Praise the grace that whispered peace.

Lord, this bosom’s ardent feeling
Vainly would my lips express.
Low before Thy footstool kneeling,
Deign Thy sup-pliants’ pray’r to bless:
Let Thy grace, my soul’s chief treasure,
Love’s pure flame within me raise;
And, since words can never measure,
Let my life show forth Thy praise.[5]

Quite simply, the God Francis Scott Key proclaimed was the God of the national anthem, the triune God of the Bible, the God of the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

Official legal statements of the United States spoke with similar confidence. Consider the 1892 unanimous United States Supreme Court decision in the case of Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, written by David Josiah Brewer. Here are some of the excerpts from this case.

If we examine the constitutions of the various States, we find in them constant recognition of religious obligations. Every constitution of every one of the forty-five States contains language which either directly or by clear implication recognizes a profound reverence for religion and an assumption that its influence in all human affairs is essential to the well-being of the community.[6]

Later, in reference to the free exercise clause of the constitution, Brewer says,

There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons; They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people. While because of a general recognition of this truth, the question has seldom been presented to the courts, yet we find that in Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 S. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; . . . not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.[7]

Later, the opinion reads, “[T]he case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity and not upon the doctrines of worship of those imposters.”[8] The opinion continues, “Truly that the Christian religion is part of the common law of Pennsylvania ... These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”[9]

From the pen of hymn-writer Francis Scott Key to the pen of the United States Supreme Court, the Christian influence on the nation is undeniable.

A Heritage Lost

With this heritage, why does western culture look more like a modern Sodom and Gomorrah than a culture that reflects the Biblical and Puritan thinking which predominated American life in both religious and political realms? Quite simply, the church has lost its savor. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ has become like tasteless salt and slowly lost its influence in this nation. More specifically, the church’s three great enemies, or what has been called “the unholy trinity”, stand out as the cause. Looking at the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil provides the key to understanding how the heritage described above has been lost.

The Devil’s Attack

The first enemy is Satan. The real, personal devil, the father of lies, has worked throughout history to distort God’s holy Word and confront the church. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Garden of Eve. “Did God really say?” is the tempter’s great question. In Genesis 3, he questions the prospect of death, Eve gives in, and Satan is shown a liar as death comes to the world.

Such deceit only began the devil’s temptations throughout history. You can imagine Noah’s preaching of judgment, and the Satanic responses that would doubt this gloomy prospect. Or consider Abraham, whom the devil could tempt to doubt whether one man could truly bless all the nations of the world. In the law, God promises in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 27 death and curse for covenanting with surrounding nations. The Satanic temptation, however, corrupts the people, they sleep with God’s enemies, and destruction comes.

In Psalm 2, God promises to establish His king on Zion’s hill (Ps. 2:4-6). The Satanic nations cry out against this (v1-3), but God promises to gain the divine last laugh (v 4). Ultimately, who wins? In Ephesians 1, Philippians 2, and Colossians 2, Paul makes the answer clear. Jesus is risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:20). Christ not only has seen His people’s sins nailed to the cross (Col. 2:14), He has not only been raised for justification (Rom. 4:25), but He has also made public display over his enemies (Col. 2:15), including all the demonic forces that exist in the universe. Every knee must bow before that exalted name (Phil. 2:10). Quite simply, the mediatorial reign of Jesus Christ is a living reality. All history hinges on the fact that Jesus is now risen, glorified in heaven, seated at the Father’s right hand and certain to triumph over all His enemies, the last one, of course, being death.

All of this is true. But as is seen in Romans 1:18-32, men and women suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It is this departure from truth that is at the heart of the sexual regression in society. As Peter Jones has argued in The God of Sex, truth and sexuality are inextricably bound together.[10]

Much of this truth-denial is tied to the historicity of Genesis. Today, in post-Enlightenment, post-Renaissance, post-modern Western culture, Satan has convinced people that Genesis 1 through 11 is mythology. These mythological ideas have arrived via the evolutionary worldview that has crept into the world and the church. Even men like B. B. Warfield struggled with some of the influences and thoughts that come out of deism and evolutionary thinking.[11] Disastrously, however, these ideas destroyed the liberal church, and they are destroying evangelicalism today. The church must defend that this Genesis is time and space history.[12]

This Satanic-led theological decline is well analyzed by C. Gregg Singer in his book, A Theological Interpretation of American History. In the introduction, Singer writes:

It is not the purpose of these essays to present a history of the United States nor of American Christianity, but rather to portray the influence of theology and the changing doctrines in the life of the church on the pattern of American political, constitutional, social, and economic development. This book is born of the conviction that ideas in general do have consequences, and that theological ideas have tremendous consequences in the life of a nation. Indeed, it is impossible to understand completely the history of the nation apart from the philosophies and theologies which lie at the heart of its intellectual life.[13]

Indeed, the philosophies and theologies of the church in the United States and Canada influence the intellectual lives of these nations. Singer’s chapter titles are telling:

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Chapter 2 – Deism in Colonial Life

Chapter 3 – Transcendentalism and the Rise of Modern Democracy

Chapter 4 – Social Darwinism: Its Theological Background and Political Implications

Chapter 5 – The Social Gospel and Its Political Effects on American Life

Chapter 6 – Theological Liberalism after 1920 and Its Political Consequences

Chapter 7 – The New Deal and Its Consequences

Chapter 8 – World War Two and After

Chapter 9 – Conservatism and Liberalism, Theological and Political, Their Ebb and Flow, 1950 to 1980[14]

Throughout the book, Singer pinpoints the lies that that have invaded the church and the culture.

In view of this onslaught of lies, one must recall Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 1:20-31. Here, Paul presents the gospel as the truth, a truth revealed in the foolishness of the cross. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (v 22-25). Those not known as wise are chosen by God and “bring to nothing the things that are” (v28).

The church often forgets these glorious truths and gains a distorted view of God. Ultimately, one’s view of God and truth dictate one’s view of reality and, thus, one’s view of the family, the church, and the state – and, of course, sexuality. It truly matters how a society perceives God and God’s interaction with creation. Satan wants us to substitute his lies for the truth about God, reality, family, church, state, and sexuality. These lies of the evolutionary mindset are the first enemy, the great lie, the great Screwtape pursuing humanity in the modern, post-modern era.

The World’s Seduction

The second enemy, the world, works in great synergy with Satan. Just as with Satan, the work of the world can be seen throughout Biblical history.

God warned His covenant people not to make covenants with pagans (Exod. 23:32). The people failed, they wandered in the wilderness, and He culled out that generation. The promise of entering the land fell to the children (Num. 14:26-36). However, that generation arrived on the edge of the land and there received the second giving of the Law. In that giving, they were given that great Old Covenant confession, the Shema (Deut. 6:4-9). There, they were required to confess “the Lord, the Lord our God,” lay the Word on their hearts, and teach the Word to their children. In Deuteronomy 7, the call is then reiterated: the people were not to make covenants with surrounding pagans (Deut. 7:3).

In one way, Joshua, Judges, and the other historical books, the wisdom literature, and the prophets are basically an exposition of the history of the Jews failing to heed that warning.

In the New Testament, the warning is the same, as God warns the new covenant people not to be unequally yoked with pagans. Consider the exhortation of 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1,

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 

‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.’ 

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

The call is clear: The New Testament saints have the same obligation as the Old Testament saints to walk in holiness and separate themselves from the world.

Other New Testament passages present similar themes. In James 3:13-18, there is a wisdom from above, and there is a wisdom from below. The wisdom from above is “full of good fruits” (v17). The wisdom from below is fleshly, demonic, earthly, and does not accomplish the righteousness that God requires. In James 4, the theme is similar: friendship with the world is spiritual adultery. James writes (v4), “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

In the church of Pergamum, Revelation 2:12-17 provides another example. There, Christ rebuked the Nicolaitans, the modern, updated Balaam. They embraced pagan practices, and Christ’s rebuke was firm. God never allows His church to be defeated by pagans, unless the church starts doing some of the pagan practices, and then God will remove the church’s lampstand. To commune with the pagans is to participate in the failure of Balaam. Only the power of the Spirit could stop Balaam’s agreement with Barak to curse Israel (Numbers 23-24). The church that makes common cause with unbelievers in religious matters is in deep trouble.

What has Christ done with the world’s opposition? In 1 Corinthians 1, as discussed above, God’s wisdom is unveiled against fleshly wisdom. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul declares, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Every opinion against the God is taken captive to the Savior. In Colossians 2, the incarnate Son of God, through his baptism, through his circumcision, nails His people’s sins on the cross. Hallelujah! Christians are bound for glory, because of the work of Christ. In Colossians 2, there is also a public display at the cross. Above the cross, the words “the King of the Jews” appeared in three languages: Greek, Aramaic, and Latin (John 19:19-21).

Here, the Savior who promised paradise (Luke 23:43) also made public display of all nations of the world and their demonic forces. He is King.

How does the church relate to this truth? How should the Biblical Counseling movement relate to this truth? The question could be posed in this way: What is the relationship of general revelation to special revelation and common grace to saving grace? This issue confronts God’s people in science, and especially the social sciences. The Biblical Counseling movement is not a group of obscurantists running around trying to hide from the truth, avoid the world, and ignore unbelievers. No, instead, the Biblical Counseling movement seeks to avoid pagan culture that is trying to destroy the church.

The modern church appears to be in love with power. The power the church sees is often in regard to the physical sciences. Much of science has offered great progress. Indeed, many early scientists were Christians. People see the great progress of science. But they must remember that science, even good science, is small “t” truth, to use the language of Francis Schaeffer.[15] It is always tentative, cumulative, and imperfect. It is man’s observation of the world apart from Scripture. The Bible, however, is capital “T” truth. It is sure, eternal, and complete. It is God’s special, infallible, inerrant revelation, given through the Holy Spirit and saving grace to the world. The triune God who sends His Son as the second Adam to save his people is not accessible through general revelation and common grace. Only the Holy Spirit provides such knowledge. The truths of the Trinity, the incarnation, and justification by faith alone through the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ are inherent to special revelation.

The important dichotomy between special and general revelation proves particularly important in the realm of the social sciences. The goal of the social sciences – a pale shadow of the hard sciences – truly is societal restructuring. Many scholars have presented arguments that reveal the religious yet anti-Christian roots of sociology. In the French revolution, really the starting point in the history of sociology, Immanuel Kant and others in France wanted to create a new society. Their sociology was not descriptive, but prescriptive.[16] Christian Smith’s book The Sacred Project of American Sociology shows that American sociology is literally a religious endeavor.[17] In Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists, Benjamin Wiker describes how this concept of evolution, coming out of deism, produces a depersonalized universe.[18]

In battling this worldly attack, the church must remember that this universe is not a mechanical universe. The regularity of this universe is because of the Noahic covenant. God made a promise, and this promise is in Christ, that there is going to be regularity. This truth contrasts with the social science which has provided society an evolutionary view of man.

The World And Sexuality

This worldly attack is nowhere clearer than in the realm of sexuality. Sexuality has become satanically twisted. Dr. Judith Reisman has done much research on this issue, largely in response to the event of her daughter being molested by an older boy. Reisman began to wonder, “Where did this trend come from?”

Reisman’s research led her to study the impact of pornography on culture. She published Images of Children, Crime, and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler,[19] a scathing depiction of the horror of the culture of pornographic magazines. She also wrote, with Edward Eichel, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People.[20] In Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, she unveiled the horrific practices of Kinsey performing sexual experiments – crimes – on children. Dr. Lester Caplan, in correspondence with Reisman, argues, “One person could not do this to so many children – these children had to be held down or subject to strapping down, otherwise they would not respond willingly.”[21] In 1991, she wrote “Soft Porn” Plays Hardball: Its Tragic Effects on Women, Children and the Family.[22] This work sent a desperate pornographic industry after Reisman. Later, with Charles Johnson, she did a paper called “Partner Solicitation Language as a Reflection of Male Sexual Orientation,”[23] in which she addressed the issue of pornography from her communications background.

In another work, Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences, she concludes:

Mothers, fathers, parents and future parents must be aware that through his using “technically” or “scientifically trained observers,” Kinsey, his colleagues and supporters have aggressively removed America’s founding protections and laws for women and children and the men who love them. The time has come to dismantle the elite’s “Grand Scheme” based upon Kinsey’s fraudulent model of human sexuality from our national establishments and from the lives of our children.[24]

The church and society must realize that Kinsey was a dishonest pan-sexualist[25] who knew no bounds of right and wrong. He was a personal deviant who deliberately perverted a people in the name of purportedly objective science. He and his staff committed crimes of molesting children under the guise of research and under the protection of the Indiana University at Bloomington campus. This scam received significant funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.[26] Kinsey and his companions pulled off one of the biggest heists in history, one of the most incredible quodlibetical obfuscations of reality in history in general and academic history in particular. However, God is not mocked; Kinsey’s death stemmed from apparent sexual self-abuse.[27]

The context of this major historical development is the whole eugenics movement: breeding people like animals under the vision of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.[28] This movement was connected to Nazism and Communism, as shown in one of its prominent leaders, Hermann J. Muller. After teaching at the University of Texas, Muller left in the early 1930s and went to Germany in spite of having a Jewish mother. He worked with the Nazis and then moved over to Leningrad to work with the communists. He later returned to the University of Indiana at Bloomington, where Kinsey was working. The eugenics movement wanted to get rid of bad people, like southern Europeans, Jews, or other “defective” people. That is the background of how the sexual revolution is tied up with the eugenics movement.[29]

The same undercurrent of revolution has taken place in reference to the homosexual movement. Social commentator Paul E. Rondeau explores the world’s attack in his 2002 article, “Selling Homosexuality to America.” He writes,

Gay rights is not about the attainment of truth nor social justice but the achievement of power. The battle centers on the control of public discourse through marketing and persuasion to shape what society thinks about and how they think about it. Homosexual activists envision that a decision is ultimately made without society ever realizing that it had been purposely conditioned to arrive at a conclusion that it thinks is its own.[30]

Unfortunately, the mass marketing has worked. In the early 1900s much of the movement became tied in with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and later with the American Law Institute (ALI). The goal of the ALI was said to be to “clarify and simplify the law to better adapt to social needs”.[31] Behind this vague expression, however, were advocates who believed in evolutionary law and sociological jurisprudence, that there is no fixed law and that law is whatever society thinks.[32] In conjunction with Kinsey, these so-called legal experts began to defend and push the agenda of sexual liberation. What were previously known as sexual crimes began to be normalized.[33]

Thus, pushed by the above academic lies, forced down people’s throats by the iron fists of ACLU-manipulated courts, popular opinion in America now is at a Romans 1:32 level – not only do they do such things, but they gave hearty approval to those who do. The sum total of this movement is not a mere changing of a few laws. Instead, it reveals the loss of gospel character. It is this downturn that is expressed in the aptly-titled book by social commentator Charles Sykes: A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character.[34]

What Kinsey brought, however, was just the beginning of a perverted sexual transformation. Due to pressure from the homosexual community, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) removed homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. In 1995, the DSM-5 removed sadism and pedophilia as disorders.[35] Such thinking drives people to be comfortable with sadist and pedophilic tendencies – as long as they are not personally bothered by them. In the end, with such thinking, pedophilia is not a crime or a mental illness, let alone a sin.

The modern church inadvertently helps the cause of the world in this way, and makes it worse, by becoming unduly worldly and adopting the standards of the successful pagans next door, whether in methods of church growth or in picking a missionary for the foreign field. Such tendencies reveal that the church begins to view the manipulated data of so-called social science as a new form of revelation on a par with the Bible. The church gladly barters away its birthright of the Word and Spirit for a manmade stew made up of the social sciences, especially psychology and state-licensed sex therapists. Other churches wrongly withdraw from the world, waiting to be raptured out of the suffering, not realizing that God’s people must suffer with Christ. Still other churches focus on becoming the moral majority and not existing as Christ’s bride.

All of these failures reveal that the mediatorial reign of Christ is being ignored by the church. Instead of staying in the arms of the heavenly bridegroom who alone can produce the fruit of the Spirit, the church sleeps with the enemy and gives birth to deformed churches which look a lot like their father, the devil. In other words, they are synagogues of Satan (cf. Rev. 2:9; 3:9).

One expression of this development is the emergent church. Ultimately, this movement will go the way of the mastodon of liberalism. For J. Gresham Machen proved a long time ago that the liberalism the emergent church represents is not true Christianity.[36]

The United States is beginning to look more and more like Europe, and what is Europe? The ghost of Christianity past. Empty cathedrals, empty churches, and now it may not have the backbone to face the third great attempt of Islam to overtake Europe. The first two were defeated; the outcome to the third remains uncertain. Matthew 28 is ignored. The church is given the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The church must go into the world and make disciples. Instead of the world looking like the field ripe for the harvest, now the world becomes the church’s friend. Instead of praying for more gospel workers, more psychologists and social workers are sought out to rescue the church from its problems. Like King Ahaz of old (cf. 2 Kings 16), the church seeks to imitate the people who are its conquerors. Pagan altars are taken up, the worship of the true God is forsaken, and false worship is the output.

What was the only cure for the people of God during the days of King Ahaz? The answer is seen in Isaiah 7. In verse 8, God promises the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. In verse 11, God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign. Ahaz pretends piety and claims he will not tempt the Lord (v12). In response, God promises a sign nonetheless: the virgin birth (v14). The virgin birth of Jesus is the thing that cures unbelief.

The church must look to this Jesus and learn what He says about engaging the world. Recall what Jesus declared in Luke 16:24: “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” The world has become manipulative, and the church goes along with the devil. After World War II, the church began to realize the tragedy of lost culture, lost universities, lost schools, and lost law courts. People sought to return to what was held before. Unfortunately, the people used disastrous methods. Now, pagan sociology, anthropology, and psychology are taught, a Bible verse is placed on it, and this passes for Christian psychology. Thankfully, this whole worldliness of the church has been well documented by the likes of David Wells, Michael Horton, and Peter Jones.[37] The church must face the reality of this lost battle.

The Flesh’s Battle

As Pogo famously announced, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.” The flesh is the third great arena in which the church must face the sexual revolution. Three areas can be observed where this battle takes place.

Serving God Vs. Serving Personal Peace And Affluence

Francis Schaeffer rightly observed,

History indicates that at a certain point of economic breakdown people cease being concerned with individual liberties and are ready to accept regimentation. The danger is obviously even greater when the two main values so many people have are personal peace and affluence.[38]

Americans live this way: desiring peace and affluence at the expense of faithfulness. The errors of the prosperity gospel proponents spread farther than many realize. How easy it is to love the first 34 verses of Hebrews 11. Who would not want a life of putting foreign armies to flight, receiving back the dead, shutting the mouths of lions, and quenching the flames? Reality, however, strikes at verse 35. Torture, flogging, being sawn in two – these sufferings are the inheritance of those advancing in faith. But they all received far more than a passing grade. Why? Because they believed God and did what God told them to do. The church must come down in the same place and refuse to go the way of personal peace and affluence.

Advancing The Kingdom Vs. Only Seeking Personal Piety

Further, both personal piety and a kingdom view must be pursued, as opposed to simply seeking an individual perspective. What has happened is that those in the LGBT community has come out of the closet, and in turn, they want the church in the closet. They are content with people believing in the triune God and Jesus’ mediatorial reign, as long as they keep their mouths shut and definitely do not mention their faith publicly. Culture allows private worship in a private religious corner – a private closet. But the kingdom of Christ must be advanced, and this truth cannot be kept safe in the closet. In short, a new reformation is needed, but not the Robert Schuller kind.[39] A Reformation is needed in the spirit of what took place in the Protestant Reformation.

Fear Of God Vs. Fear Of Man

A third battle of the flesh is the fear of God versus the fear of man. The church needs more who follow after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan. 3). More men like John and Peter (Acts 3-4) must be the goal, not Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) or Simon Magus (Acts 8). The church has always faced the mess of fleshliness and fear of man – there has always been a battle. Unfortunately, the fear of man chokes the life out of many! For some, the Bible is no longer permissible in public discourse. This retreat is foolish. Recall Spurgeon’s famous declaration about the lion-like Word of God:

The Word of God can take care of itself, and will do so if we preach it, and cease defending it. See you that lion. They have caged him for his preservation; shut him up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes! See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. O fools, and slow of heart! Open that door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and ease itself of its adversaries.[40]

The Word of God has the power needed. The gospel must go forward in its majesty, even against the world’s opposition. Choosing to not use the Word to conform to public rules is about as smart as saying to an elephant that if he does not believe in guns you cannot shoot him. How are people going to be converted if they do not hear the Bible? It is the Word of God that the Spirit uses.

A church that believes in the Word and fears God will pursue holiness over happiness, the fruit of the Spirit over feelings, Christ-esteem over self-esteem. Such a church will remove the Kantian mechanistic idea that science on one side presents a mechanical universe and religion on the other side presents a personal universe. The church must embrace the reality of the spiritual battle of Ephesians 6.

Good News At The End Of The Battle

Where will the church find good news at the end of the day? First, good news is found with repentance. When God comes to judge America, he will not start with the LGBT lobby. Judgment begins with the household of faith (1 Pet. 4:17).

The second mandate is that the church needs to fast and pray. Now is the time for spiritual armor. In Paul’s day, he sought spiritual warriors in the Ephesian church who would “keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:18-19). The same battle prayer is needed today. Remember Solomon’s prayer, recorded in 2 Chronicles (7:14): “If my people [the church] who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” He will hear if the church will humble itself and pray.

Third, the church must be salt and light. Matthew 28 must be the battle cry. Now is the time for a gospel counterattack. Now is not the time to neglect the culture and go into our Christian ghettos. Individuals need to adopt God’s design and identity. Families need to be complementarian and accept God’s design. Congregations need to stay away from the weaknesses listed in Revelation 2 and 3 and be godly. Denominations need to be salt and light. Resources must be used and that promote these truths. The works of the likes of Rosaria Butterfield, Heath Lambert, and Peter Jones are helpful to this end.[41] Christians need to enter law and science and be presidents of Christian colleges and other universities, so that the culture can be turned around.

The main salt and light, however, is the foolishness of cross-centered preaching (1 Cor. 1:21). It has always been the main tool, from the garden on. The light of the grace of the gospel is the need – not Gospel-lite with 2% theology and less filling. The church must not be full of weak-willed Hamlets. The church must stop committing corporate suicide.

To close, here is the good news and the bad news: The bad news is that Western culture has never been closer to the Roman Empire than it is today. The good news is that Western culture has never been closer to the Roman Empire than it is today. Why is that good news? The Gospel worked then, and it will work now.

Paul writes in Romans 8,

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Culture cannot separate the church from God’s love. Political correctness cannot separate the church from God’s love. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate the church from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That is the Gospel to take to a dying world.

Finally, remember the resurrection. Remember the resurrection. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 (v 50-58):

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Trusting this resurrection hope and pursuing this steadfast labor will provide the foundation the church needs to proclaim the gospel of Christ as salt and light into a dying world.

Notes

1. Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York: Reagan Books, 1996).
2. “FJT Chiluba,” YouTube video, 3:48, posted by “Gilbert Kamwengo,” August 6, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-bxajOBRg.
3. Delaplaine, Francis Scott Key, 172.
4. This version of the lyrics can be found in Edward S. Delaplaine, Francis Scott Key: Life and Times (Stuarts Draft, VA: American Foundation Publications), 169-170. Emphasis added.
5. Francis Scott Key, “Lord, with Glowing Heart I’d Praise Thee” (No. 80) in The Trinity Hymnal (Philadelphia: Great Commission Publications, 1990).
6. Church of the Holy Trinity vs. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892). Quoted in Richard Cameron Wylie, “This is a Christian Nation: Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Case of Holy Trinity Church versus The United States with Annotations” (Pittsburgh, National Reform Association), 5.
7. Wylie, Christian Nation, 6.
8. Ibid., 7.
9. Ibid.
10. Peter Jones, The God of Sex (Colorado Springs: Victor, 2006).
11. For more on Warfield and evolution, see David Calhoun, Princeton Seminary: The Majestic Testimony: 1869-1929, volume 2 of David Calhoun, Princeton Seminary (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1996), 256-259.
12. As an example of a recent scholarly exploration into this topic, consider William VanDoodewaard, The Quest for the Historical Adam (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2015).
13. Charles Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation of American History (Greenville, SC: A Press, 1994), 1.
14. Singer, American History, table of contents.
15. See Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1981), 19-21.
16. Much of this history can be traced in the appendix of the authors’ re-published work: The Sword and the Shovel: The Battle for the Biblical Family (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, forthcoming).
17. Christian Smith, The Sacred Project of American Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
18. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
19. Judith Reisman, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler (Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1997).
20. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House Publishers, 1990.
21. See Reisman, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, 36-42. The quotation comes from page 40.
22. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House Publishers, 1991.
23. Judith A. Reisman, & Charles B. Johnson, Partner Solicitation Language as a Reflection of Male Sexual Orientation (1995). Accessed February 2018. http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/Reisman-Johnson_Study.pdf
24. Reisman, Crimes and Consequences, 313.
25. Ibid., 7-13.
26. Ibid., 29, 200-201.
27. See ibid., 76-279.
28. See ibid., 179-180 for some discussion of Planned Parenthood; See ibid.,259-283 for discussion of the relation of this movement to the eugenics movement.
29. See ibid., 291-305 for the discussion of Muller and Kinsey.
30. Paul Rondeau, “Selling Homosexuality to America,” Regent University Law Review (2001-2002): 443-485. The quotation comes from 485.
31. Reisman, Crimes and Consequences, 188.
32. Ibid., 189-190.
33. See ibid, 187-199 for a discussion of this entire phenomenon.
34. Charles Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).
35. For discussion of changes in the world of psychiatry on the nature of sexual deviation, consider these resources: Paula Caplan, They Say Your Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Whose Normal (New York: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1995); Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People (Montreal, Robert Davies Publishing Company, 1996); Allen Frances, Saving Normal (New York: Harper Collins, 2013).
36. See. J Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1924).
37. David Wells, No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1993); David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1994); David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 2008); Michael Horton, Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991); Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for a New Age (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing Co., 1992); Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (Escondido, CA : Main Entry Editions, 1997).
38. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Thought in Western Culture (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1976), 246.
39. See Robert Harold Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982).
40. Charles Spurgeon, “The Lover of God’s Law Filled with Peace,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised” (London: Passmore & Albaster, Paternoster Buildings, [n.d.]), 42.
41. See Rosaria Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith (Pittsburgh, PA; Crown & Covenant Publications, 2012); Rosaria Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Pittsburgh, PA: Crown & Covenant Publications, 2015); Heath Lambert, A Theology of Biblical Counseling: the Doctrinal Foundations of Counseling Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016); Peter Jones, Capturing the Pagan Mind : Paul’s Blueprint for Thinking and Living in the New Global Culture (Nashville, TN : Broadman & Holman, 2003).