Choose Life Australia

 
Filed on 23 July 2015 in Food For Thought category. Print This Page

Will we be a Confessing Church? The time is now.

We live in perilous times. The Body of Christ is under serious attack. Our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are in peril physically on a scale as never before. We praise God for their witness as they confess Jesus as Lord even as they are about to die. We thank God for their example of forgiveness to their Muslim neighbours and we thank You, Lord God that many Muslim people are being drawn to You as a result of this witness.

We thank You, Lord God, for the declaration by the Muslim assassins – in the context of a threat – that we are “the people of the Cross”. We praise You that many of the Jihadists recognise that there is a spiritual component to this warfare and that therefore they must target the Christian pastors so that they cannot pray to the Lord of the Angel Armies. But we also pray for the safety of those pastors.

Here in the neo-pagan but still called “Christian” West we are under attack if we believe in Creation order. This reaches a peak when legislated for by government. See the Chronicle of Shame and Permission becomes Compulsion.

This is a fundamental battle for truth, to believe it, to teach it and live by it. These threats are well documented by many people and groups and the prophetic voices have been sounding the alarm for a long time. Indeed, in our modern era, they go back to CSLewis The Abolition of Man (1963) and Francis Schaeffer e.g. Death in the City (1969) in particular.

Leon Kass, referring to cloning in The Wisdom of Repugnance (1997), wrote “shallow are the souls who have forgotten how to shudder”.

This attack on Creation order is a defiance against God as Creator and Designer and Lord over all. This old but new rebellion to “be our own gods”, to rebuild the tower of Babel in our own time, focusses on creation and intelligent design, the design and purpose in creation of male and female, and mankind created in the Image of God.

Specifically then the attacks are on those who believe in intelligent design, their side-lining for promotion and recognition, the banning of teaching of anything but evolution; the attack on marriage as between male and female; and the attacks related to the intrinsic value of all human life as created in the Imago Dei.

Bill Muehlenberg, in Strained Relations (2011) documents the extremely serious threat on the Church in the push for homosexual “marriage” spearheaded by the homosexual lobby and, weirdly, by many others on the grounds of “equality” without any consideration of the consequences on society and freedom of speech.

Various declarations of our time have sought to establish truth in these matters. In particular there are the Manhattan Declaration 2009, Westminster Declaration 2010, and the Canberra Declaration 2010. These all declare the right to belief and liberty of conscience, that marriage is between male and female, and that all human life has intrinsic value.

Modern declarations involving the value of human life are

Medicine with Morality Manifesto 2006
Conscience in Medicine Declaration 2010
San Jose Articles 2011
Dublin Declaration 2012
Geneva Declaration on Perinatal Care 2014
Compassionate Care Alliance 2015

The Canberra Declaration affirms religious freedom, freedom of speech and liberty of conscience; the essential nature of marriage as between male and female and the important function of families producing children with mothers and fathers; and the intrinsic value of all human life.

The immediate critical watershed – a Rubicon not to be crossed – is the push for marriage to be re-defined to allow spouses of the same sex. This is an attack on the very nature of God’s creation and to silence God’s people.

I quote – yet again – John Yates in his assessment of the seriousness of this “the oppositional but complementary nature of heterosexual gender identity is written into the very framework of the order of the universe and the peak of the Creator’s genius. The challenge is far more profound than most Christians realise. This is a claim (for same-sex marriage) that God did not create His Image as male + female, it is an attack on the very existence and nature of God. The spiritual warfare around this issue is very intense.”

Many church leaders have spoken out on this issue. It is time for all Christians – and others who simply believe that our society is based on Judeo-Christian principles and seek for it to remain that way – to declare their stand on Creation order for marriage.

The clearest way of doing this is for church leaders to sign, and encourage/plead for their church people to sign, the Canberra Declaration.

THE TIME IS NOW.

We are up to 61,720 signatories as of today. Let’s go for 100,000 and then for 200,000.

By signing the Canberra Declaration we will become a Confessing Church.

Will you stand up for God’s creation order and liberty to speak for it? Will we be able to speak and write these things without fear in a year’s time? Will you even be targeted because you have signed this declaration? Yes, you may – even up to 5 years in the future. It may cost you something but will you sign? The time is now.

Lachlan Dunjey. 23 July, 2015.

PS did you really need persuading? Some from the secular press now share our concern. See 18 July 2015 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/same-sex-marriage-push-attacks-freedom-of-religion/story-fn562txd-1227446169673
PS2 Why the “confessing church”? Because that was the name given to that part of the church in Germany that decided it was not going to be subservient to government and only be subservient to God through the Bible.
PS3 The Canberra Declaration is FIVE YEARS OLD TODAY. Celebrate and sign.