SC Baptist Church begins ordaining GAY and TRANSGENDER ministers

When you abandon the Bible, everything else goes off the rails:

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER – A new non-discrimination policy at First Baptist Church in Greenville will offer same-sex marriage ceremonies and allow membership, leadership positions, church ordinances, and ordination to openly gay and transgender individuals without telling them their lifestyles contradict biblical teaching.

“It’s going to open up a space for evangelical gay people to have a place again,” Pastor Jim Dant said of his church’s recent consensus to “not discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

First Baptist Church of Greenville has a storied history dating back to its 1831 founding when William Bullein Johnson led fundraising efforts to start the church. Johnson later served as the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention upon its organization in 1845. The church was the original home of Furman University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In 1999, First Baptist Greenville broke ties with the Southern Baptist Convention and aligned itself with the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship which hosted a breakout session at its 2015 annual meeting in June in which two CBF pastors presented opposing views on the issue – but agreed leadership did not consider the matter theological.

The policy was enacted following a six-month “discernment process” that began in November 2014 during which more than 200 church members discussed their personal experiences, their interpretations of Scripture, and who they believed they were as Christians and as Baptists, according to Dant.

The congregation reached a consensus that “being open and welcoming to all people is part of the essential nature of our community of faith,” Dant said.

He told Greenville Online a crucial step of the process was assuring church members no one would tell them their personal convictions were wrong.

The process did not bring the church to reach a conclusion on whether homosexuality is right or wrong but to instead answer a question: “Can you worship and live with the LGBT community in the church?”

Dant’s personally believes the Bible has no family value system for the 21st century. He dismisses Old Testament condemnation of homosexuality as part of Levitical law which Christians no longer practice particularly with regard to regulation of slavery and men treating their wives and daughters as property.

“What we believe about marriage and family is culturally driven, not biblically driven,” Dant said.

KEEP READING…

So they ignore what the Bible says in Romans about Homosexuality:

“For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.” (Romans 1:26-28).

And in Corinthians:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Even Jesus defines marriage between a man and a woman in a profound way, and yet they ignore this too:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:3-9)

The Bible is very clear on homosexuality and those who ignore it do so at their own peril:

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. (Revelation 2-20-23)

How in the world can they read this and think Jesus isn’t serious about this?


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