Marriage is for Life — Not from Wife to Wife
When the standard Protestant teaching of open divorce
was adopted by the Worldwide Church of God in 1974, most members accepted that
enormous change without giving much time to its consideration. No one was encouraged to go to God to see if
this old Protestant teaching really was “new truth.” The members were given this “new truth” by God’s ministers. God’s ministers were given this “new truth”
by headquarters. And with HWA always
running around the world, headquarters was a man who was giving Solomon a run
for his money —
Adopting Protestant Marriage Practices
For forty
years, from 1934 until 1974, the Radio/Worldwide Church of God taught marriage
for life. Students at Ambassador
College were required to take Principles of Living and Family Relations
classes, where we were taught to take great care in getting married, and then
take great care of that marriage. — because marriage is for life.
At the time
we were in Ambassador, no AC grads had ever gotten divorced. For over twenty years all those people who
had been taught that marriage is for life kept their marriages intact. An incredible record.
But Herbert
Armstrong was surrounded by men through whom God had never miraculously worked,
as God had with him. HWA was especially
subject to the influence of one man, a quick thinking, glib talking, handsome
man of great talents. This man was Herbert Armstrong’s opposite, in flair and
fashion, and in his approach to God.
For example,
on the Sabbath commandment, Herbert’s thinking was, “What can I do to honor God
on His Sabbath?”
The other
man asked the rhetorical question, “If, on the Sabbath, I am passing by the
swimming pool on a hot southern California Saturday afternoon and fall in, is
that breaking the Sabbath?”
He then extended this thinking: “If I take a short, refreshing, uplifting dip in my pool on a hot California Sabbath afternoon, is that breaking the Sabbath?”
His
interest was in finding all he could get away with on the Sabbath, and still be
considered technically obedient. His
focus was on himself, not God. This
thinking finally found its full fruition when he was videotaped naked chasing a
masseur around her parlor, on a hot Texas Sabbath afternoon.
This man,
with this spiritual approach, was the prime agent for changing the church’s
teaching that marriage is for life.
This change was supposed to be for the good of the people — he saw
himself as a helper of their joy — and this change was supposed to allow the
church to enter a new phase of astronomical growth.
This man
and his close associates heavily lobbied Herbert Armstrong to change the
church’s teaching on marriage for life, but the stubborn old man was stuck on
the principle that “what God has joined together, let not man put
asunder.” But that principle was put
asunder, and the “new” old Protestant teaching was jammed down the throats of
the ministry at a ministerial “conference” in 1974.
It wasn’t
really a conference at all. There was
no conferring. It was a cramference,
where this new teaching was crammed down our throats in a few days. We were not told to pray and study and ask
God if this new teaching, which wasn’t new at all because most other churches
already taught it, and which totally contradicted everything we had believed up
to that point, was right. We were
simply told to swallow it.
After those
few days of re-teaching, any who still believed what the church had taught for
40 years were told to leave. The giver
of truth was the true church, and they were giving it to us. No need to double check with God.
In
presenting this new teaching, the extreme rhetorical question was again
used: If a primitive heathen tribe
performs some strange wedding ceremony where they dance in a trance around a
campfire all night long and do exotic, mystic rites, is God in that marriage?
Naturally,
to us European types, jungle wedding ceremonies did seem a touch weird, so the
conclusion was reached that God was not in those strange marriages. From there the next logical step was that
God is not in any marriages at all outside “His church.” God was only working in “His church.”
Therefore God only bound marriages in “His church.” His church was The Worldwide Church of God, Post Office Box 111,
Pasadena, California.
Thus the
teaching was that there was one law for Worldwide and another law for the
world. This was an incredible teaching,
because it meant that all those people outside WCG who thought they were
married were merely fornicating freely.
If only
they had known.
Consequently,
when people outside God’s church divorced, they were not putting asunder what
God had joined together, because God had never joined them together in the
first place, since they had not been married in God’s Church, The Worldwide
Church of God, Box 111, Pasadena, California.
With this,
HWA’s objection was satisfied. By
teaching married people to remarry, they were only putting asunder what God had
never joined together, anyway. He and
Stan Rader left the country after the cramference in 1974, while the ministers,
who had just had the pro-divorce teaching crammed down their throats, then
crammed it down the throat of the whole church.
I don’t
think we ministers had thought of it — I guess we were like zombies, so maybe
those native wedding ceremonies weren’t so weird, after all — but many church
members immediately brought up an obvious question: “Since we were married before we came into God’s church, The
Worldwide Church of God, Box 111, Pasadena, California, do you mean our
marriage is not bound by God?”
It was not
clear whether these people were angered or excited at the thought that their
marriages were null.
These
startled people were assured that their marriages were now bound, once they
were entered as a member into the WCG computer, or for those early members,
into the card file. At the time they
entered WCG, that was the marriage that God bound. That was the marriage that was to be for life. Divorce is a sin in the past for those
people who suffered it, and that sin can be forgiven just like any other
sin. But the marriage in existence at
the time of entry into God’s church was then bound for life.
Or so they
said. But that was a lie.
This was
the same procedure that Satan used with the later WCG spiritual dictators. They would move the church one step toward
lawlessness, and then say that was all.
Just that one little step. And
they were lying. It was just one step
at a time, and once you took that one step toward lawlessness, you would take
another one. That’s why Satan uses the
dictatorial form of governmental. It
makes it so much easier to deceive the masses.
It was the
same back in 1974. Different dictators
in charge, but being led by the same lawless spirit, and using the same
method. One step at a time.
First they
said that all non-WCG marriages were not bound by God, so those marriages could
be put asunder. They led HWA to
conclude that non-WCG marriages were not bound by God, but that WCG marriages
were the ones bound by God for life.
Surely some marriages had to be bound by God, he thought!
However,
once they broke the marriage for life principle, —
When they had gotten the church to accept that enormous first step, that all marriages are not joined by God for life —
They then
easily jumped to the next step — that no marriages are joined by God for life.
The WCG
immediately preached that there is never a point where marriage is for life.
Never!
If a WCG
member committed any type of activity which could be considered by a mate, or a
minister, as illicit, or if a member left the church, for a sufficient period
of time as determined by a minister, then the other mate was free to divorce
and remarry.
No marriage
is ever joined by God for life! That’s
the doctrine that all of you believe.
All you Meredithites, Dartites, Unitedites, Flurrites and Humites — you
all believe that God never joins any marriages for life. You all believe that there is always some
circumstance that can end every marriage.
This was a
total contradiction. HWA had gone along
with the liberals to say that all non-WCG marriages weren’t bound by God for
life, but that all WCG marriages, including those in effect at the time of
baptism in WCG, were bound for life.
However, from that point on, there were never any marriages that were
considered bound for life. None. Any marriage could be ended by certain
circumstances.
They taught
that no marriage is ever joined by God for life, while saying they taught that
marriage is for life. What a farce!
But it was
smooth, wasn’t it?
The right side of the glib mouth spoke of being married for life to the one you are with at baptism, while the left side of the glib mouth spoke of all the ways to end a marriage. And it worked well.
Thousands
of members ended their marriages.
So if you
wonder why the minister who preaches to you that marriage is for life has taken
more than one wife — that’s why. In the
Churches of God, marriage is never really for life.
The church accepted this teaching in very short order. No one was encouraged to fast and go to God or to check the Bible closely to see if this was the mind of God. The members checked with God’s ministers. God’s ministers checked with headquarters. And headquarters was —
Whose Mind Did
We Follow?
The
destruction of the marriage for life teaching in the church, led by a man who
for over 40 years has had not the slightest understanding of marital fidelity —
a spiritual Wilt Chamberlain, was total and complete.
When this man was temporarily out of the church in the early 1970s, a relative of his, at a regional ministerial conference in Cincinnati, gave an estimate of how many Pasadena women God’s evangelist had laid. “A couple hundred,” the head of ministerial administration figured. And decades later, when the everlovin’ evangelist should have been a wise grandfather, giving his grandchildren tidbits of wisdom from his life, he was still chasing women. Who knows what his total was by then, or with Viagra, will be?
How likely
is it that with his life’s record, God is going to let his mind understand deep
spiritual truths?
The
disobedient mind only understands disobedience. God only gives increased understanding to those who obey
Him. To those who disobey God gives a
reprobate mind.
With this
man’s thinking, as expressed in his personal actions over and over and over
through all the decades, what other conclusion on marriage could he possibly
have come to? His disobedient mind
would have to conclude that marriage is not sacred. That’s all he knows.
Yet it is
his mind, more than any other, which is responsible for the Church of God
teaching on marriage today.
A
supporting pillar for this change from marriage for life to marriage from wife
to wife was that the Worldwide Church of God alone is God’s true church.
Believers
were only in Worldwide. Only Worldwide
marriages were bound by God, they pretended.
No other marriages or divorces really counted.
An
unbeliever was very easily defined as anyone who left WCG. If an emigrant went to the Church of God (Seventh
Day) or one of the Yahwist groups, even though they might become more obedient
to God than they had been in WCG, as many did, they were considered
unbelievers, and their marriage was vulnerable to destruction. Anybody who left Worldwide was subject to
being divorced and his mate considered free to remarry, because he had left the
one true church.
Notice the
increasing control given by the teaching that only Worldwide was God’s true
church. WCG controlled eternal
salvation. You couldn’t be one of God’s people unless you were in God’s
church. And WCG controlled your
marriage. Your marriage was bound only as long you stayed in God’s church, the
Worldwide Church of God, Box 111, Pasadena, California.
Today the
concept that believers were only in the Worldwide Church of God seems
ludicrous. Almost no present or former
Worldwiders now believe that. It has
become evident that often it was the believers in God who were leaving WCG and
the unbelievers who were staying.
The
teaching that the Worldwide Church of God was the only true church on earth was
simply used as a snare to see who would individually obey God and who would
obey men instead. It was nothing more than a bronze serpent. Yet that precept was used as the basis for
picking up the marriage teaching that most of the other churches already had.
So if two
United young people marry, are they not bound because they are not in WCG? If a couple in the Living Church of God
begin living together in holy matrimony, does God not join that marriage? Or will some teach that now God only joins
the marriages in UCG, or LCG, or PCG, or Dave Hume’s CG, and no others count?
Was Herbert
Armstrong, born of Quaker parents who were not at all in God’s Church,
illegitimate?
This is all
absurd.
It was
always absurd. No church ever stands between man and God. When a man and woman vow to mate, God sees
that. Wherever. Whenever.
WCG, Church of God 7th Day, RCC, Methodist, or native. Just as John held the Gentile Herod
responsible for his marriage, and Christ held the Samaritan woman responsible
for her marriage, when you vow to marry someone before God, you got it.
Two ironies
here:
One is that
most ex-WCG people now realize that the man who was most responsible for
engineering the destruction of marriage in WCG has led an unholy, unconverted
life. Yet those people almost
unanimously follow his teaching on marriage, which he maneuvered into the
church.
The second
irony is that this change in teaching, which was supposed to lead to
astronomical growth in the church, brought a huge curse on the church from the
day it was instituted. This change was
immediate and catastrophic. The church
soon had a high rate of failing marriages, probably higher than the general
population. Whereas the church formerly
had whole, wholesome families sitting together, this soon turned into families
with holes. The astronomical growth
that was expected in the church never happened. The opposite occurred.
This curse
also fell personally on Herbert Armstrong’s private life, with his marrying and
divorcing a divorced woman, the most shameful part of his public life.
When this
change occurred, the change in teaching that marriage is for life, the whole
church was cursed, HWA was cursed, and many individual families suffered
enormously.
The belief
that Christians can marry multiple mates has been an integral part of
Protestantism since the Reformation.
The Roman
church had always taught that marriage was for life. In practice, though, they could be bought off. If the person who wanted a new mate could
pay the required fee, the church would declare that his marriage had been a
fraud to begin with and annul it.
Therefore, the marriage was as if it had never occurred. The Roman church presumed that it had the
authority to do this. In our time,
Herbert Armstrong presumed the same thing and would take it upon himself to
annul a marriage and a family that had been continuing for years, thereby
freeing the parties to keep the same partners they had been committing adultery
with.
Because the
Roman church presumed that they could stand in the place of God, and because of
their gross hypocrisy in taking bribes to slither around their own teachings,
at the time of the Reformation they received stinging criticism on their
marriage teaching. One of their prime
critics was Erasmus. He taught that
love exceeded law. If an unhappy couple
was forced to stay together because of the marriage law, that was not
love. If that couple could divorce and
remarry, they could find happiness, and that was the loving approach.
He also
believed in the concept of two laws. He
said that when Christ taught marriage for life in Matthew 5, He was
speaking only to the disciples, who were the purest ones — the true church, as
it were. But there were others, he
said, who were not so pure and had need of disobeying Christ in different
matters, such as taking more than one mate.
Erasmus
never broke with the Roman church, even though he criticized it broadly. Martin Luther, who was put out of the Roman
Church and spearheaded the Protestant Reformation, shared Erasmus’ view that
marriage was not for life. He concluded
that since Old Testament law required that adulterers be stoned to death, if a
mate committed adultery, he could be counted as dead. Thus the other spouse was then free to remarry. One sacred name group teaches this approach
today. However, if the adulterous mate
later repents of his sinning and wants forgiveness, this dead mate doctrine
allows no room for resurrection.
As always
happens when the law is loosened a little, it soon becomes a lot. The Protestant reformers broadened their
dead adulterer doctrine to include deserters.
If a man left his wife and children, he was no better than an adulterer,
so his mate was free to remarry. If a woman
refused to submit to her husband as Vashti refused Ahasureus, then he was free
to find his Esther. If a man was
impotent ... Well, there was no question that he was dead, so he could be
divorced, too.
The
Protestants, then, since the early 1500’s, left the Biblical law that marriage
is for life, and replaced it with love and human reason. This is basically the new truth that WCG
picked up 400 years later, in 1974.
It has been
shown by different studies that the Bible Belt, and Christians in general, have
more divorces than non-Christians.
Christians
know that God hates divorce. So, of
course, being good Christians, they hate divorce, too, and really wish they
didn’t have to get divorced themselves.
But they do. Over and over. More than the people who don’t hate
divorces.
Churches
set up divorce support programs. They
know that tearing marriages asunder is a great evil and causes individuals
great trauma, second only to death. But
like the government welfare system, which causes what it aims to prevent, these
divorce support systems encourage Christians to go ahead and end their
marriages, because they know a lot of people will support them when they do.
These
Christians have their cake and eat it, too.
They hate divorce, and they get divorced all the time. Apparently they don’t hate divorce nearly as
much as God does.
So it is
with the churches of God, which adopted nominal Christianity’s teaching on
marriage. They say they teach that
marriage is for life, all the while having divorce as an ongoing practice. They have their cake and eat it, too.
Seven times
the New Testament teaches that marriage is for life. Four times in the gospels, once in Romans, and at the beginning
and end of I Corinthians 7, to set the boundaries for everything else
that is said in that chapter.
Indeed, the
Churches of God say they believe in marriage for life. But at the same time they say that marriage
can be ended in a number of ways.
All those
people you have seen get divorced and remarried in the Church of God were
supposedly married for life. If they
were married for life, how is it that they are now remarried? So now they again maintain that they are
once more married for life. Until they
decide not to be.
If you can
remarry if your mate commits adultery, you are not married for life. You are only married until your mate — or
you — commits adultery.
If you can
remarry if your mate leaves your religion, you are not married for life. You are married only until your mate — or
you — finds a new church.
By the
non-life marriage teaching, it is relatively easy to put a marriage
asunder. Just renege on your marriage
vow and commit adultery. That frees
your mate to remarry, which, logically, frees you, too. You can’t have one party unbound and the other
bound. Then you can marry your new
found love and put it all behind you, since divorce has to be forgiven just
like any other sin, and again sit in a congregation of God’s church.
Renege,
remarry, repent, and resit.
That’s not
marriage for life at all.
Marriage
for life has to mean that you are joined together, no matter what, as long as
you both have life. In sickness and in
health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, till death do you
part. That is marriage for life.
To say that
marriage is for life and then allow all these early exits is a Clintonistic
prevarication. Bill-babble. What is “is”?
So even
though they proclaim that they believe that marriage is for life, the churches
of God are filled with divorce. Because
they don’t really teach marriage for life.
They only say they do. In
reality, the churches of God teach that marriage is never bound until death.
Just as
with Christianity in general, by accepting any divorces at all, the Churches of
God have become filled with the practice.
For
example, a church member divorced his/her mate, married another church member,
divorced that one, then remarried the first one. This, of course, is nothing more than mate swapping, papered over
with state marriage licenses. Such
perversion of the marriage principle was not allowed even in hard hearted
Israel, but it was allowed in God’s church.
A minister
committed adultery with the wife of a member, divorced his own wife, and
married the other woman. They were all
together in God’s true church: the minister, the member’s ex-wife now married
to the minister, and the minister’s ex-wife, looking for a new husband, within
God’s church, and all the kids therein involved.
The only
one who wasn’t there was the member who had his wife stolen. He was put out for a bad attitude.
A man
commits adultery with another woman in the church, divorces his wife, and
remarries the other woman. This new
marriage ceremony is conducted by a Church of God minister, gifts for the newlyweds
are brought by Church of God members, and on some Sabbath the minister gives an
appropriate sermon about the meaning of marriage.
You
probably know of a situation in your local group which has made a mockery of
marriage. People commit adultery, get
divorced, then remarry, repent, and resit in the congregation. Over and over and over this happens. It’s all legal, according to the Talmudic
rules of Christianity.
The
churches are filled with divorce, marriage is mocked, God hates it and the
fruits show it.
The fact
is: if you accept divorce and
remarriage in any form, then you accept it in all forms. What is intended to be a teeny tiny crack
becomes a cavernous carnal chasm.
But this
chasm is not just theoretical theological tidwinkle. This chasm crushes the lives of all who fall in it.
Pro-divorce
advocates often use liberal buzzwords concerning the church’s original teaching
of marriage for life. They call the
teaching that marriage is for life, instead of from wife to wife, “abusive” and
“cursed,” They feel that people need to
divorce and remarry to be happy.
Let’s
disabuse ourselves of the notion that marriage for life is abusive.
At the time
of this “abusive” teaching, no Ambassador College graduates had ever gotten
divorced. In the college and in the
whole church, we were carefully taught to take care of our marriages, love our
mates, and be dedicated to them for life.
At that
time, the church was filled with wonderful families, row after row of mother,
father, and their kids sitting together peacefully. The church itself was full of life and love. God Himself was working within that church
then. Many people were being called to
a better way. The church was not close
to perfect, but they tried hard to be obedient, and God was working with it.
When the
teaching of marriage for life was changed to the teaching that marriage is not
for life — that is, you can remarry if your mate commits adultery, leaves
Worldwide, sells the goats (!), etc. — what happened?
In the last
25 years, Church of God people have suffered terrible trauma, depression,
suicides, and broken lives, all because of the present abusive treatment of the
church —
Which is —
Encouraging,
directly or indirectly, their members to divorce their mates.
You can’t have
it both ways.
If you
teach that marriage is for life, then remarriage families are split up.
If you
teach that marriage is not for life, then original marriage families are split
up.
When the
pro-divorce people talk about the “abusive treatment” of the former Church of
God, they are only thinking about the remarriage families, where some decided
to reunite with a former mate or live singly with God rather than remarry. How about all those more numerous original marriage
families that they have broken up since?
How many
thousands of Church of God children have been forsaken by parents who were
force fed, without open study or discussion, the anti-life marriage
doctrine? How many church of God
ministers today stand before their congregations with no fire in their hearth,
having been deceived into not being careful with their marriages, and who left
the wife of their youth and picked up someone else’s?
What is the
cost in human suffering of breaking up all these homes?
The Ten
Commandments place adultery just below killing. On a stress scale, psychologists place divorce just below a death
in the family. Children of divorces
have been repeatedly shown to have lasting chronic scars from the shattering
experience. When we worked in a
Christian school, we could consistently pick out the children of divorces
without ever asking. They played angry
basketball!
Just as
political liberals concentrate on the woes of the criminal and overlook the
victim, so all these thousands and thousands of destroyed original families
have been cruelly overlooked by those hollering about the divorce and
remarriage abuse of the church. And
just as the political liberals, through their form of love, cause more crime
and more victims, so those who advocate multiple marriages, their form of
mercy, actually cause divorces and shattered lives.
Naturally
pro-divorce people don’t say they are pro-divorce, any more than pro-abortion
people say they are pro-abortion. They’re pro-choice. But pro-abortion people — such as Planned Parenthood, N.O.W. and
Hillary, all of whom really don’t like abortions — cause abortions. And those who teach multiple marriages, even
though they profess to hate divorce, cause divorces.
Political
liberals try to disassociate AIDS from sodomy, and religious liberals do not
associate accepting divorce with busted families. But sodomy causes people to get AIDS, and teaching divorce
directly causes mates to leave their mates and families to be fractured.
If you
teach that marriage is for life, then remarriage families are split up.
If you
teach that marriage is not for life, then original marriage families are split
up.
Ex-Worldwiders
can easily see that after 1974, when the church began to teach that marriage is
not for life, the WCG hurtled downward as Satan fell from heaven. Even those who helped cause this demise
declare that the early 70’s were the peak of that church. When the church taught marriage for life,
the church was alive. When we entered
the period of open divorce, that church choked and died. Within 20 years of this cataclysmic change,
the Worldwide Church of God ceased to even pretend to be a commandment keeping
church of God. Their trip down the road
of permissive Protestantism was complete.
Because of
the hard-hearted teaching that marriage is not for life, divorce and remarriage
in the churches of God is not some sin from the distant past that has been
repented. It is an ongoing, life
shattering, never ceasing practice.
Further, a
great number of these remarried divorcees divorce again, and suffer further
bitterness.
Pro-divorce
advocates call the church’s original teaching cursed. But that church wasn’t cursed.
Today’s church is.
Some
pro-divorce teachers admit that Christ taught that there is to be no divorce at
all. But they go on to reason that the
way of mercy is to allow divorce and remarriage.
First of
all, this makes the teacher of divorce more merciful than Christ himself. As if Yahshua, Yhwh’s salvation, who gave
Himself in a cruel execution for the repentant sinners of the world, did not
understand mercy. But Christ taught
that divorce and remarriage, which was allowed to Israel under the Old
Covenant, was not merciful, but hardhearted.
That which
human reason says is merciful, Christ called hard hearted. Not being forever true to your original mate
is hardhearted.
How so?
An example:
A woman
left her husband and her children and her church and walked on the wild
side. Evidently she felt that she had
been missing something with her kids and her husband and God, so she left to
find what she had been missing.
The
husband, of course, was extremely stung by the stunning actions of his
wife. He remained stable, took care of
the kids, and continued in church as always.
The wife
went through taverns and tramps, and after a while, realized she hadn’t been
missing anything but taverns and tramps.
The forbidden fruit was seedy.
She became sorry for what she had done, and she wanted to go back with
her husband and her family.
She wanted
mercy. Just as Christ forgave the woman
taken in adultery, she wanted to be forgiven.
Her husband
would not grant this. He would not take
her back. The church he attended taught
divorce and remarriage as a way of life, and did not teach mercy and continuing
love for the fallen mate. His wife had
left the “true church,” she had committed adultery, so the husband was free to
remarry. Which he did.
The
church’s teaching had no mercy for the prodigal daughter.
The kids
forgave their mother. She was their
mother, their only mother for this lifetime.
With them, there was no question whatsoever of their divorcing their
mother. No matter what she did,
adultery or not, she would always be their mother. And when she asked them for forgiveness, they had mercy on her,
and they took her back as their mother.
A perfect
love of one mate for another is this same kind of perpetual love. No matter what, he/she is the mate for
life. And if he/she asks for it, the
mate will give mercy and forgiveness, even to seventy times seven. Just as these kids did for their mother.
When an
unbeliever departs, and the “believing” mate remarries, what if the unbeliever
repents? What if he/she is the lost one
that left the 99, and then comes back?
Where is mercy? Where is concern
for that one that left? When should you
stop seeking for them?
Never.
The present
teachings of the churches allow no room for mercy for the original mate. Hardhearted. They completely miss the essence of Christianity.
Another
example: a man molests his daughter for
some length of time. The family does
not imprison him, but puts him out of the household to protect the
daughter. The wife and husband divorce
and soon he remarries, making the females he has mated with include his
original wife, his daughter, and now his new wife, and possibly someday some
new daughters. His original wife, who
never remarried, comes down with a serious disease, no doubt in part caused by
the perverse husband and his sins against his family. At this terrible time, she could have used a husband who had repented
of his awful sins, and who was loyal to and supporting his wife and family in
this time of great stress, even if he wasn’t living with them. This was what needed to be done. Instead, because of the Church of God
teaching of multiple mates, the man quickly remarried, totally forsook the wife
of his youth, the mother of his children, and gave no support to his original
wife and family, all the while following Church of God doctrine.
This is so
hard hearted Satan himself would be proud.
A
characteristic of liberal love is that it applies to general groups, but fails
with individuals. The Clintons and
their sycophants are great illustrations of this. They have great love for the poor, but some of Clinton’s top
level cabinet appointees had not paid the pittance of Social Security taxes for
their Hispanic maids. Liberals have
great love for women in general, and spout out often about “women’s rights,”
but the individual women Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaderick were physically
attacked by Clinton and then vilified by his feminist followers for daring to
tell about it.
So it is
with Christian liberals. Their love and
mercy applies to women as a whole. They
say we have to allow remarriage, for the sake of the poor women who suffer from
divorce. But their love and mercy does
not extend to the poor women who are being divorced.
You either
have multiple marriages, or you have marriage for life. And Christ clearly said that having multiple
mates is hard hearted. There is no
mercy for the original mate.
When the
anti-life marriage doctrine was adopted, it was said that all divorces in the
past would be forgiven, and they wouldn’t divorce any more from that point
on. Those who were living with someone
other than their original mate would stay with the one they were with at the
time of conversion, and that particular marriage would be for life.
Why didn’t
God allow the pagan wives to stay with Israel at the time of Ezra? Why not just allow those families to stay
together, and say that from that point on they were not to take any more pagan
wives?
Almost all
Christians would follow this reasoning.
The Israelite men and pagan women already had kids, and were functioning
families. Let them stay together, and
from then on, the men wouldn’t take any more pagan wives. Human mercy, human love, and human
understanding would do that.
But that is
not what happened.
At the time
of Ezra, what if Yhwh had allowed them to keep their pagan wives, and only
forbade them from repeating that mistake in the future?
The sin of
idolatry would have remained in their midst.
They had just returned from captivity, having been taken captive because
of idolatry. The whole nation of Judah
was at risk.
Likewise,
what is the harm if a second wife stays with her new husband after
baptism? In looking at the history of
this policy for a quarter century in the WCG, what is the harm that has been
done?
The harm
that has been done is that the institution of marriage has been destroyed in
the Church of God, as it has been in Christianity, as it has been in the whole
country.
Look around
you at the families of your acquaintance that have been destroyed because of
the teaching that marriage is not for life.
Thousands of church of God families and dozens of ministers’ families
have been shattered, simply because they believed they were not married for
life, and acted on that belief.
Many other
families that are still together live under a constant cloud of doubt. Husbands and wives have “problems,” and they
don’t know if it will “work out” or not, because they’re not committed to a
lifetime marriage. There’s always the
possibility that one will make a mistake and the other will leave. There is the lingering idea with some that
maybe “God” wants them to leave, and find a better relationship. The marriage is under a cloud of doubt,
instead of a covenant of commitment.
The family is fragile and fractious.
Marriage is
never sacred in Christianity and in the churches of God. At any given time, any marriage is subject
to destruction. The wife commits adultery and it’s “Goodbye, Gertrude.” The husband changes churches and it’s “Chuck
it, Charlie.”
This is the
harm that has been done. The institution of marriage itself has been defiled.
Marriage is never for life. In that sense, it has been destroyed.
Why didn’t
God allow the pagan wives to stay in Israel?
Because the whole nation of Israel was at stake.
Why doesn’t
God allow people who are remarried when they are baptized to stay with their
second or third mate?
Because the
whole institution of marriage is at stake.
Look at the
history of the Worldwide Church of God and its ragged remnants in the last
quarter century. Not very long in
history, yet look at the change. Not
only the institution of marriage was destroyed, but the whole church was
afflicted. All because of human mercy,
shortsighted human love, saying — All these divorcees will stay together, and
we just won’t divorce any more.
It didn’t
happen like that. Divorce is not some
distant sin from the past. It is a
constant, perverse practice among those called to be God’s people
WCG said
that all past sins, including the sin of divorce, were washed away by the blood
of Christ at baptism. They said that
divorce was a sin that could be forgiven like any other sin, and that any
previous marriage was done away by Christ’s sacrifice.
What
happened?
Those
divorces that had to be forgiven in the past also had to be forgiven in the
present. If marriages in the past had
been washed away by Christ’s blood, then many marriages in the present could be
washed away by Christ’s blood. Any sin
that was forgiven in the past had to be forgiven in the present.
So all
those divorces that were to be left in the past kept recurring.
This is a common
occurrence in the churches . A man
commits adultery against his original wife. They then divorce, and he marries
the woman he was committing adultery with.
Next, he repents of his divorce sin, while staying married to his new
wife.
Doesn’t he
now have to be forgiven?
Divorce is
a sin that can be forgiven like any other sin, isn’t it?
So by
normal Protestant theology, which WCG adopted, the man and his new wife have to
be considered in full fellowship, because the previous marriage has been washed
away by the blood of Christ. And, of
course, he and his new bride are now married “for life”.
But — the
prime sin here was adultery. The man
was dissatisfied with his wife, lusted after another woman, and went out and
got her. Under the Protestant teaching,
— amazingly — this stolen relationship is continued, while the original God
ordained marriage, and the first wife, is washed down the drain by the blood of
Christ. The man who lusted after the
other woman gets to keep her. His lusts
are fulfilled, and he gets the blood of Christ to cover them.
This
practice may even be repeated by the same man or woman, divorcing and marrying
again, each time “for life,” always with the church’s blessing.
But this is
all a farce. It’s just open divorce,
covered with a communion cup.
It sounded
so good. Divorce is a sin in the past,
to be repented of like any other sin, and all marriages from baptism on are for
life. But it didn’t happen that way at
all.
There is no
halfway ground. It’s all or
nothing. Either marriage is for life,
or marriage is meaningless.
There are
only two possibilities: marriage for
life, or open divorce and multi-mating.
When the
Worldwide Church of God picked up the teaching of divorce and remarriage as new
truth, they were only adopting what nominal Christianity had taught for
centuries. This was one of many moves WCG made in this direction, where they
came up with old Protestant doctrine as new truth.
With
marriage practices, there is no real difference between the churches of God,
and ordinary Christians, and the world at large. They all divorce and remarry freely. It’s just that the world is more open and honest about it, while
Christians try to sugarcoat their divorces, classifying them as good divorces
and bad divorces.
All theirs
are good.
Yhwh
himself never gave detailed rules for good divorces and bad divorces, even when
divorce was allowed. Because of that,
the Jews had continuous arguments over the grounds for divorce.
The
churches today, Christian and the Churches of God, have merely continued the
arguments of the Jews. They spend their time trying to determine what is a good
divorce and a bad divorce.
It’s not a
question of good divorces and bad divorces. You can’t have just a few good
divorces and multi-matings. It is a question of marriage for life, or marriage
from wife to wife. Either marriage is
for life, or marriage is meaningless.
Any divorce
allowed in the past has to be allowed in the present and will always pop up in
the future. Whatever mistakes have been
made in the past will always be made in the present. Any allowance of divorce in the past must always allow for
divorce in the present. Thus it becomes
a normal, established practice. An
attempt is made to put a theological cover on this practice, but there is
always a theological exit. Marriage is never for life. Always from wife to wife.
This is
what Christ had to change: the
teachings of the Jews, the very same teachings and practices that the Churches
of God and Protestant Christianity have today.
Pro-marriage
people are accused of making divorce the only sin that can’t be forgiven. Pro-divorce people make adultery, mating
with someone besides the original mate, the only sin you don’t have to repent
of — to actually stop.
What does
it mean to repent of a divorce?
To repent
normally means that you stop doing whatever’s wrong.
What did
the Israelites do when they repented of being married to pagan wives? They ended the marriages.
But all
these Christians who have repented of their divorces —
What do
they do differently?
Nothing.
They do not
honor their original vow or covenant.
They still stay with the same non-original mate. Nothing changes. They simply say they have repented of their divorce sin.
The wrong
with divorce is the succeeding adultery; that is, continuing to mate with
someone other than the original mate.
To repent of a divorce means to stop living with someone besides your
original mate. As long as you keep
living with someone other than the one you divorced, there is no
repentance. Nothing changes.
If a person
is a practicing Sodomite, living with his homosexual partner, as many do today,
and repents of that, what should he do?
The
repentance of the pro-divorce teaching would have him go on as always, still living
in the same forbidden relationship.
What he needs to do, however, is stop the continuous breaking of the
seventh commandment. That is
repentance.
Christ said
that anybody that marries a divorced woman commits adultery. So adultery, not divorce, is the real
problem. You may separate from a mate
and then live singly, as Paul said, and not be living in sin. But if you are married to a divorced person,
a person with another living mate, you are continually living in adultery. To repent of that, you have to stop living
in adultery.
The
pro-divorce teaching makes adultery the only sin you don’t have to repent
of. A divorcee repents of his divorce,
while continuing to live in adultery.
Further,
you will notice that it is not actually the divorce which is said to be washed
away by the blood of Christ — It is the previous marriage which is being washed
away.
It’s not
the divorce that is forgiven. It’s the
marriage that is forgiven.
Did Christ
die to end marriages?
At
marriage, a man and woman have taken a vow, to each other and to God
Himself. Why would Christ want you to
break a vow which you made before God?
Would not Yahshua, the perfect Law-keeper, the Living Ten Commandments,
want a follower of His at conversion to then keep his vow?
Would
Christ the humble Law-keeper want you to go back and honor the covenant you
have made?
Today it is
easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a used car
contract. But God doesn’t end these
marriages, because God doesn’t teach the breaking of vows. That breaks the ninth commandment. He teaches the keeping of vows. When you vow to make someone your mate, you
are vowing that before God, and that vow lasts as long as both of you are
alive.
When people
say they have repented of the sin of divorce, it usually means nothing, because
nothing changes. The parties continue
to live in what Christ called adultery.
The pro-divorce teaching makes adultery the only sin you don’t have to
repent of.
If Christ
had taken a physical wife, do you think He would have ever forsaken her, no
matter what she did, after He had vowed to be her husband? If she committed adultery, would He go find
another spouse, too? If she became an
unbeliever, would He give up on her, or consider her the one lost of the
hundred?
Christ
would have been loyal and faithful to her, for all His physical life. If she asked to be forgiven, He would
forgive up to seventy times seven times.
If she did not, then He would look at her as the one lost who left the
99, and He would seek for her and wait for her. He would never give up on his wife, never forsake her no matter
what, and He would never take another bride until physical death came to one of
those two.
Christ did
have a wife spiritually. The one who
became the Messiah acted under the name of Yhwh in the Old Testament. He was symbolically married to Israel.
Was that a
bum deal! Worse than any mate any of
you ever married! Every kind of
whoredom and idolatry — total adultery, perfect porneia — was practiced
by his bride Israel whom he had plucked out of the trash dump of Egypt. He was so disgusted He even wrote her a bill
of divorce, but then He said he was still married to her, (Jeremiah 3).
What’s
more, He did not get remarried. Do you
read in the Bible where Egypt became His wife?
Or Assyria, or Babylon?
No. He took no other nation as His bride. Instead He went to his death without
remarrying, because He already had a wife.
It was she who killed Him.
Hateful hussy!
After that
death, the reborn Christ is now free to remarry. This time the bride will be spiritual Israel, the obedient ones.
Christ
plainly said that any man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. He taught that marriage is for life. Perpetual fidelity, forgiveness forever,
love without limit. One man, one woman, till death do them part. Perfection.
But the farther along we go in human history, the more this law is
broken. So many families have been torn
apart, in society and among Christians, so many lives affected, that it is
difficult to even discuss the subject.
The law, however, is not the problem.
Breaking the law is the problem.
That is where the heartache and suffering have their cause. But in Christ, in His example of obedience
and in His comfort, is where we have our remedy.
For forty
years the Radio/Worldwide Church of God taught marriage for life. Now it has been nearly thirty years since
they picked up the Protestant teaching that marriage is not for life. In the first 40 years, many were blessed by
the church’s teachings. In the past 30
years, many have been cursed by the church’s teachings. Each of us now realizes we stand before God
not as a corporation, but as an individual.
This carries great responsibility, but it also gives great comfort. Yhwh gave His only Son for you, the
individual. That Son took the whip
lashes for you, the person. The pole
with its human attachment was hoisted for you, the deceived sinner. And the sharp pointed spear poked in His
side for you, the repentant, obedient believer.
If you have
been trapped by Christianity’s anti-marriage teaching, and you have to bear the
burden of that, there is someone standing beside you ready to help carry your
pole. Your ultimate healing will not
come from any earthly marriage, but from your spiritual wedding to Yahshua,
Yhwh’s salvation, which He provided for you.
Chapter 2
Matthew
19 — the exception that became the rule.
It is an amazing feat, testifying to the deceptive power of the human mind, that theologians take such a plain statement, repeated four times in the teachings of Christ, and then conclude exactly the opposite of what it says.
Mark
10:11 — “Whosoever shall put away
his wife, and marry another, commits adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband,
and be married to another, she commits adultery.”
Luke
16:18 — “Whosoever puts away his
wife, and marries another, commits adultery:
and whosoever marries her that is put away from her husband commits
adultery.”
These
statements are as plain as can be. But
the pro-divorce teaching uses the “exception clause” in Matthew, which Mark and
Luke did not even bother to include, to claim that Christ taught multiple
mating. This clause is strongly used as
a reason for supporting all the divorces among Christians today. There are several simple reasons why Christ
was not advocating divorce and multiple mates with this “exception.”
1. Hillel or Shammai?
The Messiah
was not like the Jews thought a good messiah should be. He worked at a common job, carpentry. He wasn’t good looking. He had a common name, Yahshua, the same as
the man who led Israel after Moses died.
He was not proud and pompous as a king normally is. And He did not think as the Jews thought.
The Messiah
wasn’t like today’s Christians think He was, either. He wasn’t the wimpy little lord Jesus that you see hanging on
walls, with long, girlish hair and a mucky look on his face. And He often taught just the opposite of
what today’s Christians believe.
The religious Jews were always trying to trap Christ, trying to get Him to cross what they considered absolute truth. They had accused Him and His disciples of eating with sinners, not fasting, eating with dirty hands, and breaking the Sabbath. In all these cases, they had not understood His thinking.
Now, in Matthew
19, they had a new trap for Him — divorce.
“The
Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him, and saying unto Him, “Is it lawful
for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” (All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from the King James
Version, with archaisms changed.)
The Jews
disagreed among themselves about who could divorce and remarry. The followers of Hillel said a man could
divorce his wife and be free to remarry for the flimsiest reasons.
“The
following women may be divorced: She
who violates the Law of Moses, e.g. causes her husband to eat food which has
not been tithed... She who goes out on the street with her hair loose, or spins
in the street, or converses with any man, or is a noisy woman. What is a noisy woman? It is one who speaks in her own house so
loud that the neighbors may hear her,” (from the Jewish Mishna).
But the
followers of Shammai thought that a man could divorce his wife only
if she committed adultery. The husband
was stuck with the loud talking and loose hair, but if she committed
adultery — then he could dump her.
That’s just
like the Christian teachings of today.
Most
Protestant Christians believe that you can divorce for any reason you
want. But some believe that you can
divorce only if your mate commits adultery.
Isn’t it
ironic that the Christians wound up in the exact same theological pickle as the
Pharisees? To the human mind, these two
are the only possibilities.
The Jews
had argued over this for hundreds of years.
The Christians have argued this for hundreds of years, too, mostly since
the Protestant Reformation. But they
all agree that at some point, a couple can divorce and remarry.
There was
only one possibility they did not include.
Again the
Pharisees’ question: “Is it lawful
for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” NKJV.
Such as
talking too loudly? Would Christ side
with Shammai, or Hillel?
“And He
answered and said to them, “Have you not read, that He which made them at the
beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave
father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one
flesh? Wherefore they are no more ,two
but one flesh. What therefore God has
joined together, let not man put asunder.”
No divorce
at all, Christ answered! Two people
became one entity, not two, and one cannot be separated.
The
religious Pharisees hadn’t even seriously considered the possibility of no
divorce, because Moses had indeed written that a man could write a bill of
divorce.
“When a
man has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no
favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her: then let him
write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of
his house,...,” Deuteronomy 24:1.
The Pharisees understood very clearly that Christ meant no divorce at all, so they asked Him why Moses had said that.
“They
said to Him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and
to put her away?”
He said
to them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away
your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be
for fornication (porneia), and shall marry another, commits adultery
(moicheia); and whoso marries her which is put away does commit adultery.”
Now
Christ’s own disciples were astonished.
Christ had not said that you could divorce a wife for loose hair or
talking too loudly. Nor had He agreed
that you could divorce your wife for committing adultery, because that was
hardhearted.
He had
given a totally new teaching. Marriage
for life, for better or for worse, loose hair or loud talking or adultery, till
death do you part.
No divorce
at all was more than even Christ’s disciples could comprehend!
They
blurted out, “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to
marry.”
Obviously
some of these men were married to loud talkers.
The thought
of having to stay with their wives, no matter what, weighed heavily on their
minds. They knew that Christ was saying
that you stayed with a wife for life, no matter what. And they figured it would be better not to get married at all
than to face loose hair, loud talking, even adultery, and still have to love
that wicked woman.
From now on,
every time they looked their wives in the face, they would realize, “Oh, God —
this is it!”
We have to
appreciate just how awful humans can be.
Ministers who can be reprobates, friends who can be treacherous,
relatives who can be unfathomable. And
a mate who can at times be detestable.
Surprisingly,
your mate has to face the same thing — a self-loving, ugly mortal.
The Ten
Commandment stones were carved only by the finger of Yhwh — twice. These holy statements could not be defiled
by man’s carving. The whole stones at
the entering of Canaan had never before been carved on by man. The tomb that Christ was placed in had never
held the body of a sinful, stinking human.
And the
Father, when His only Son was on the stake, withdrew from Him, even though the
Son was perfectly clean, except that He carried on His shoulders our dirtiness.
In a
marriage, each mate has to accept that the other is a vile human being. Then try to help them overcome that, and
never forsake them.
Never
forsake them.
This
concept of love without limit astonished the disciples’ carnal minds.
“But He
said to them, “All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it has
been given; For there are some eunuchs,
which were so born from their mother’s womb:
and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be
eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake. He that is able to receive it,
let him receive it.”
Some would hav