The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

As regular readers know, I read and monitor a number of right-wing Christian websites and blogs. Some days, it is hard to do. Of late, the hysteria over same-sex marriage has resulted in uncounted Bible thumpers making pronouncements of doom and judgment.  Filled with homophobic rage and bigotry, these false prophets are doing all they can to cause the faithful to fear. The gays are coming, the Gays are coming, these modern-day revolutionaries cry out, ignorant of the fact that the gays have always been among us. The only difference now is that gays no longer fear what the religious-right can do to then. Out of the closet they came and they have no intentions of returning.

The real issues aren’t homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Evangelicals, Mormons, and conservative Catholics are losing their seat at the head of the cultural table and they don’t like it. Relegated to the back of the room, little more than an afterthought, they whine, scream, and complain that nobody is paying attention to them. They blame secularism, atheism, and liberal Christianity for the rise of homosexuality in America, but the real blame rests on their shoulders. Thirty or so years ago, the religious-right traded piety and holiness for political power. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they decided to wage a war against any and all who oppose their morals, ethics, and beliefs. Instead of being counter cultural, the religious right decided to assault their fellow citizens and force them to believe in their God and obey the teachings of the Christian Bible. What is now happening is that secularists, atheists, humanists, liberal Christians, and even Evangelicals and Catholics, are pushing back, realizing that if the religious-right gets their way on same-sex marriage they will not be satisfied until the Bible is enshrined as law and the Christian flag flies of the U.S. Capitol. In others words, theocracy is their goal.

What follows is a handful of the hysterical statements made by those warning that God’s judgment is coming if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage. Enjoy!

Fox News commentator Todd Starnes, speaking at Germantown Baptist Church, Memphis, Tennessee:

“I believe there is a war on religious liberty in the United States of America. And this war is not targeting people of the Muslim faith, it’s not targeting people of the Jewish faith or the Hindu faith or the Buddhist faith. This war on religious liberty is targeting people of the Christian faith.”

Former candidate for President Alan Keyes:

“The United States Supreme Court may presently make a decision discarding marriage as an unalienable (natural) right. By defect of reason and respect for the Constitution, the decision will return the people of this country to the condition of constantly impending war characteristic of the human condition when and wherever the just premises of government are abandoned.

A decision degrading the natural right of marriage, endowed by the Creator, to the status of a fiat right, fabricated by government, will be unconstitutional on the face of it, because it disparages an antecedent right, retained by the people, which disparagement is explicitly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution’s Ninth amendment. Under present circumstances, the decision will also invite conflict on account of the openly flaunted prejudice of two of the justices participating in it..

…If the United States Supreme Court presumes to impose any redefinition of marriage on the states, respectively, or the people, without addressing the issue of unalienable right it involves, with reasoning that respects God-endowed right (which is the logic by which the American people asserted, and still claim to possess and exercise, sovereign authority over themselves), the Court’s decision will be an attack on the very foundation of constitutional government, of by and for the people of the United States. It will be a high crime and misdemeanor that effectively dissolves the just bonds of government between and among the states, and among the individuals who compose the people of the United States. It will therefore be just cause for war.

Like the Dred Scott decision that heralded the onset of the first Civil War, the Court’s action will bring the nation to the brink, whence “nothing but confusion and disorder will follow. …” If the justices do not tread carefully, their temerity could very well set in motion the death throes of what is still supposed to be their country. “Forbid it, Almighty God!”

Evangelical broadcaster Rick Wiles:

“Now the communists rule this nation and everywhere communism takes control, they go after the churches and they kill the pastors and they demolish the church buildings and they reeducate the church children. That’s what’s coming to America. It’s already started.”

“We are at the end of the road as a nation. If the Supreme Court dares to defy Almighty God one more time, I’m telling you it will be the last time.”

“I believe I am speaking under the unction of the Holy Spirit. I’m telling you there will be swift, sudden and devastating consequences for the United States of America. America will be brought to its knees, there will be pain and suffering at a level we’ve never seen in this country. The word that I hear in my spirit is ‘fire.’ I do not know if it refers to riots or looting or war on American soil or a fireball from space. I simply know that a sweeping, consuming fire will come across the United States of America and this country will be charred and burned.”

“Life may change radically in 60 days. I’m talking about the fast-moving, radical homosexual movement that has captured control of the American political system, the corporate world, the news media, the entertainment industry and the educational system. This is a takeover and it is anti-God, it is anti-Christ. The same-sex marriage case before the U.S. Supreme Court is not about same-sex marriage, it is about the criminalization and the elimination of biblical Christianity in the United States of America.”

“Brace for impact if it goes against God’s divine order of marriage…”

Institute on the Constitution leader Michael Peroutka:

…Now to attempt to change that which is eternal and forever fixed by the Creator is to do nothing less than make the claim that you are God. This is very wrong and very dangerous, and the Supreme Court of these United States is now considering taking this very same dangerous step.

While there are many conclusions that can be drawn as we witness this cultural degradation, one comes most immediately to my mind. When a culture discards the Word of God as the standard for what is right and what is wrong, and relegates these determinations to fallen men, the results are as predictable as they are terrible.

In the time of the founding of America, when a Biblical worldview was predominant in the American people, this connection between following the commandments and peaceable existence was clearly known, easily understood and evidentially experienced in the American culture. Undoubtedly, living prosperously by living righteously is what Jefferson meant when he used the phrase “pursuit of happiness”.

Psalm Two warns that when the judges and the rulers of the earth throw off God’s law and take it upon themselves to make their own rules for right and wrong, they will be dashed to pieces like a rod of iron striking a clay pot.

Regrettably we seem to be setting ourselves up for this very lesson. Unless our government officials start obeying God and stop “playing god,” this is a lesson we will experience fully…

Liberty Counsel chairman Matt Staver  “urged the owners of an Oregon bakery who were fined for violating the state’s non-discrimination law when they denied service to a gay customer to refuse to pay the fine in an act of civil disobedience against an “unjust law.”:

“If the government wants to come in and put Rosa Parks on the back of the bus, Rosa Parks shouldn’t move to the back of the bus. If they are wanting to take Christians and put you on the back of the bus because of your faith, you shouldn’t voluntarily walk to the back of the bus.”

“There is nothing historically or throughout our long history of Judeo-Christianity that says that someone who’s got dark skin can’t marry someone who’s got white skin or lighter color skin. That’s never been rooted in our history, that’s never been rooted in natural law, that’s never been rooted in millennia of human history. Marriage is objectively, to use a philosophical term, ontologically, the union of a man and a woman. If you can’t get that right, good grief, how can you be a judge on any court?”

Rick Joyner, executive director of Morningstar Ministries:

The “abomination of desolation” that was prophesied by Daniel, Jesus, and the first century apostles could have been translated “the abomination that desolates.” Because homosexuality is referred to as an abomination in Scripture, and its impact on Western culture is so quickly and profoundly desolating the moral fabric of Western civilization, it is to be expected that many will start to consider this “the abomination that desolates.”

Who could have dreamed just two decades ago that we would have major cities celebrating “Days of Decadence” with all manner of perversions being performed and flaunted openly in our streets? Who would have thought that such a moral and religious nation could fall so quickly to the ultimate national depravity spoken of in Isaiah 5—calling what God calls “good,” “evil,” and what God calls “evil,” “good,” while the dishonorable are honored and the honorable are dishonored? Is that not precisely what has happened to America in just the last generation?

The meltdown of morality in our military could be happening even faster. Just a few years ago, the U.S. military was such a bastion of morality and integrity that adultery was considered grounds for dismissal because one’s vows had been broken. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was the handwriting on the wall that a devastating change was coming. But who could have foreseen the pace of the desolation of our military since homosexuality was openly allowed in the ranks? It moved quickly from everyone having to accept it, to everyone having to celebrate it if you expected any further promotions, to now being forced out if you do not celebrate it.

Christians are now openly discriminated against, if not persecuted, in the U.S. military. Not only are some of the best and brightest leaving the military, they are no longer choosing it as a possible career.

The same is taking place throughout government services on all levels, as well as corporations, education, and the media, as was once the case for a long time in arts and entertainment. Now, with a single Supreme Court decision it could be that Christians, Muslims, and Jews that honor their books as the word of God will not be able to “buy, sell, or trade” in America without the constant threat of losing your business, or your position and livelihood, because of an offended homosexual.

Even if this is not “the mark of the beast,” it will be for those who are now losing what they, in some cases, have given their lives to build, because they would not compromise their religious convictions in order to buy, sell, or trade. If the Supreme Court decision falls the way it is expected to, we can be sure that very soon every Christian in America will have to make a similar choice between obeying the Word of God or this beast.

Matt Staver, Rick Santorum, Kenneth Blackwell, Steve Deace, Bradlee Dean, John Eidsmoe, Joseph Farah, E.W. Jackson, Rods Parsley, Paige Patterson, Andrew Sandlin, Ed Young, Larry Tomczak, Jerry Prevo, Janet Porter, Tim Lee, Richard Land, Peter LaBarbera, Phil Burress, William Boykin, Robert Jeffress, Tim Wildmon, Don Wildmon, Mike Huckabee, Franklin Graham, Harry Jackson, James Dobson, and a cast of thousands, signed the Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage:

We stand together in defense of marriage and the family and society founded upon them. While we come from a variety of communities and hold differing faith perspectives, we are united in our common affirmation of marriage.

On the matter of marriage, we stand in solidarity. We affirm that marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of Creation. Marriage is ontologically between one man and one woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to children and formative of family. Family is the first vital cell of society, the first government, and the first mediating institution of our social order. The future of a free and healthy society passes through marriage and the family.

Marriage as existing solely between one man and one woman precedes civil government. Though affirmed, fulfilled, and elevated by faith, the truth that marriage can exist only between one man and one woman is not based on religion or revelation alone, but on the Natural Law, written on the human heart and discernible through the exercise of reason. It is part of the natural created order. The Natural Law is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to as a higher law or a just law in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. Civil institutions do not create marriage nor can they manufacture a right to marry for those who are incapable of marriage. Society begins with marriage and the family.

We pledge to stand together to defend  marriage for what it is, a bond between one man and one woman, intended for life, and open to the gift of children.

The institutions of civil government should defend marriage and not seek to undermine it. Government has long regulated marriage for the true common good. Examples, such as the age of consent, demonstrate such a proper regulation to ensure the free and voluntary basis of the marriage bond. Redefining the very institution of marriage is improper and outside the authority of the State. No civil institution, including the United States Supreme Court or any court, has authority to redefine marriage.

As citizens united together, we will not stand by while the destruction of the institution of marriage unfolds in this nation we love. The effort to redefine marriage threatens the essential foundation of the family.

Experience and history have shown us that if the government redefines marriage to grant a legal equivalency to same-sex couples, that same government will then enforce such an action with the police power of the State. This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights. The precedent established will leave no room for any limitation on what can constitute such a redefined notion of marriage or human sexuality. We cannot and will not allow this to occur on our watch. Religious freedom is the first freedom in the American experiment for good reason.

Conferring a moral and legal equivalency to any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, by legislative or judicial fiat, sends the message that children do not need a mother and a father. As a policy matter, such unions convey the message that moms and dads are completely irrelevant to the well-being of children. Such a policy statement is unconscionable and destructive. Authorizing the legal equivalency of marriage to same-sex couples undermines the fundamental rights of children and threatens their security, stability, and future.

Neither the United States Supreme Court nor any court has authority to redefine marriage and thereby weaken both the family and society. Unlike the Legislative Branch that has the power of the purse and the Executive Branch which has the figurative power of the sword, the Judicial Branch has neither. It must depend upon the Executive Branch for the enforcement of its decisions.

As the Supreme Court acknowledged in the 1992 decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, its power rests solely upon the legitimacy of its decisions in the eyes of the people. If the decisions of the Court are not based on the Constitution and reason, and especially if they are contrary to the natural created order, then the people will lose confidence in the Court as an objective arbiter of the law. If the people lose respect for the Court, the Court’s authority will be diminished.

The Supreme Court was wrong when it denied Dred Scott his rights and said, “blacks are inferior human beings.” And the Court was wrong when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in Buck v. Bell, “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” thus upholding Virginia’s eugenics law that permitted forced sterilization. Shamefully, that decision was cited during the Nuremburg trials to support the Nazi eugenic holocaust.

In these earlier cases, the definition of “human” was at issue. Now the definition of “marriage” is at issue. The Constitution does not grant a right to redefine marriage — which is nonsensical since marriage intrinsically involves a man and a woman. Nor does the Constitution prohibit states from affirming the natural created order of male and female joined together in marriage.

We will view any decision by the Supreme Court or any court the same way history views the Dred Scott and Buck v. Bell decisions. Our highest respect for the rule of law requires that we not respect an unjust law that directly conflicts with higher law. A decision purporting to redefine marriage flies in the face of the Constitution and is contrary to the natural created order. As people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law. We respectfully warn the Supreme Court not to cross this line.

We stand united together in defense of marriage. Make no mistake about our resolve. While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross.

Rabbi Jonathan Cohn:

 It is April 29, 2015. Two hundred and twenty six years ago this day, George Washington readied himself for the first ever presidential inauguration, to take place the following day, the day America as we know it came into existence, with a president’s hand resting on the Word of God. That day would conclude with America’s first government gathering in prayer to dedicate the nation’s future into God’s hands.

A century and a half earlier, another seminal event took place on the same day. On April 29, 1607, the voyagers of the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed, gathered together in prayer at Cape Henry to set a wooden cross in the sands of Virginia Beach, and dedicate the new civilization to the will and purposes of God.

America’s biblical foundation would be reaffirmed over and over again by its forefathers, from the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, to the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, to the leaders of the first American colonies who declared publicly and in writing that the new commonwealth had come into existence solely for the glory and purposes of God.

No historian can rewrite that. No president can expunge it. And if a thousand angels swore on a thousand bibles that this was not the case, it would in no way alter the fact – that this American civilization was conceived, established, dedicated, and founded on a biblical cornerstone; America was brought into existence for the will and purposes of God.

On this night, over two hundred years ago, George Washington held in his hand the first ever presidential address. In that address was a prophetic warning: It was this:”the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself hath ordained.” In other words, if America should ever turn away from God and His ways, if it should ever disregard His eternal rules of order and right, then His blessings, the smiles of Heaven, would be removed from the land.

It was an ancient warning. It had been given in Hebrew words by the prophets to the kingdom of Israel. But Israel turned away from God and disregarded His eternal rules of order and right.

They drove God out of their government, out of their public squares, out of their culture, and out of the lives of their children. They worshiped idols and served other gods. They celebrated immorality and persecuted the righteous. They lifted up their children on the altars of foreign gods. And the blessings of God were removed from the land and replaced with judgment.

It is two and half thousand years later, and America has made the same mistake. We, too, have turned away from God. We, too, have driven Him out of our government, out of our public squares, out of our culture, and out of the lives of our children. We too have profaned the sacred and sanctified the profane. And we, too, have killed our most innocent, over fifty five million of our unborn children, and our collective hands are covered with blood. What we were warned never to do, we now have done.

And now we gather in the city named after the one who gave that prophetic warning. And yesterday, in this city, in the building that sits across from this hill, the justices of the Supreme Court took up their places on the bench to decide whether America should strike down the biblical and historic definition of marriage. The very fact that such an event took place is, in itself, a sign that the America of Washington’s warning is here and the day of which he warned is now.

We have become a civilization in spiritual schizophrenia, a nation at war against its own foundations. The Supreme Court opens its sessions with the words: “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” But if then this honorable court should overrule the word of God and strike down the eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself hath ordained, how then will God save it?

Supreme Court Justices, can you judge the ways of God? Can you, with manmade verdicts, overrule the eternal laws of God? There is another court, and there is another judge. And before Him, all men and all judges will give account. If a nation’s high court should pass judgment on the Almighty, should you then be surprised if the Almighty should pass judgment on that court and that nation.

In the Book of Jeremiah, it is written: “Has a nation ever exchanged its gods… Yet my people have exchanged their glory for that which cannot help them.” Let us not pretend as to what we are now doing. We are doing exactly that which Israel did on the altars of Baal. We are exchanging our God for idols, our light for darkness, and our glory for that which cannot save us. Are we ready to risk that which comes on the other side of that exchange, the day when the blessings of Heaven are removed from the land?

We began with a word from the president of our nation’s first days. So I now speak a word to the president of our nation’s most recent days. Each time I have spoken here, I have asked a question. Now I will answer it. “Mr. President, with all respect that is due, ‘What happens if one assumes the presidency by placing his left hand on the Word of God, and then, with his right hand, enacts laws that war against the very same Word of God on which he laid his hand? Such an act invokes the judgment of the Almighty.

To swear an oath on the Word of God in which it is written “Defend the weak” and “Do not murder,” and to then to not defend the weak, to not protect the unborn from harm, but, instead, to advance their murder, is to invoke the judgment of the Almighty.

To swear an oath on the Word of God, in which it is written, “Do not cause your brother to stumble,” and then to seek to force those who uphold the Word of God to transgress the Word of God, by partaking in the killing of the unborn and the celebration of sin, is to invoke the judgment of the Almighty.

And to swear an oath on the Word of God, in which it is written, ‘Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” and then to take part in leading a nation away from “the eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself hath ordained,” and against the very Word of God on which you laid your hand to swear that oath, is to invoke the judgment of the Almighty.

When the leaders of ancient Israel turned away from God, when they abolished His precepts, and broke His covenant, they did so in the shadow of Moses, whose voice cried out to them in warning.

“Mr. President, when you address the nation from this house, look up. Look up above the Senators and Representatives, above the Supreme Court Justices, and above the invited guests – and you will see a face – the only full visage on that wall – looking back at you. It is the face of Moses.

And if that face could speak, it would say this: “No king can overrule the laws of God, no order can annul the order of God, and no judgment of man can stand against the judgments of God. Invoke not His judgment. But choose life. And lead in the way of repentance. Invoke the grace of God, that He might have mercy on this land.”

We have come to a most critical moment. As Elijah stood on top of Mount Carmel and cried out to Israel in its hour of decision, in between two altars and two gods, his voice now cries out to America and says to us, “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” Seventy years ago, the Chaplain of the United States Senate, cried out in the same voice, and said to this nation, “If the Lord be God, then follow Him! But if Baal, then follow him… and go to hell!”

Tonight, America stands at the crossroads.  And as Elijah came to the summit of Mount Carmel to make a declaration, we have come this night to Capitol Hill to declare… that our God… is not Baal. Our God… is not Molech. Our God… is not government. Our God… is not money. Our God… is not power. Our God… is not pleasure. Our God… is not political correctness or any other manmade thing.

We have come to this hill to declare… that there is only one God – And He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of Israel and of all nations. And He alone is the Rock upon which this nation has come into existence.

And from this high place we make this declaration: We will not bow down our knees to Baal. We will not bow down our knees to political correctness. We will not bow down our knees to a morality that is as shifting as wind swept sand. We will not bow down our knees to the laws and precepts of rebellion or to the sacred cows of moral apostasy. We will not bow down our knees to the idols of man. We will not bow down to Baal.

We will bow down our knees only… to the Lord our God, come what may, and we will have no other gods before Him.

For some trust in chariots, and some trust in princes, some trust in supreme courts, and some trust in white houses, some trust in governments, and some trust in wall streets, some trust in powers, and some trust in idols.

But we will trust in the name of the Lord our God, in the name above all names, above all kings, and above all powers. We will trust in the only name given by which we can be saved.

We will trust in the name of Yeshua Ha Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, the Judge of all judges, the Light of this World, the Glory of Israel, the foundation stone upon which this nation came into existence, and the only answer, the only chance, and the only hope America has, that it might once again shine with the light of the fire of the presence of the glory of the Living God … and not … go to hell!