My Journal

Practical issues treated as impractical;

Impractical issues treated as practical. 

I remember teaching the Sunday School one time on Celibacy when we were studying the epistle to the Corinthians, a pastor immediately interrupted, saying that everyone should get married, implying that celibacy is negatively abnormal.

True, yielding to a life of celibacy is special, because it is as Jesus said, for the kingdom of heaven's sake (Matthew 19:12). So it is a giving up. And such person needs to understanding what sort of calling this is. If a person indulges in the life of celibacy because a married priest is sinful, as the papists put it, or simply because he finds marriages useless or lowly or meaningless, then he has greatly sinned against God, who created man and woman and made the union between a man and a woman to be a sacred relationship.

So not everyone should get married, not everyone should be celibate. One must know what calling God has for oneself.

I am intrigued, that this pastor's own sunken marriage has been public knowledge for a while now, and he wanted to call celibacy abnormal. I wonder who is truly abnormal here. 

True, according to the Bible, there is only to be one wife.

However, I have seen many American preachers laughed at Muslims' notion of four wives.

It is remarkable, how Jimmy Swaggart dared to point this out as a mocking statement before one of Muslim's great debaters, Ahmed Deedat, during an important meeting, and later committed adultery.

I supposed a preacher from a pornographic culture should be careful when he speaks of the holy matrimony of one husband and one wife.

But I supposed with its divorce rate, it's hard for these to be mindful of such things. 唉呀！美国的基督徒是最喜欢离婚的啦。有些为了在社会里留面子，不得不保持婚姻，做做样子。Not good? Bye bye, dump it, I want divorce!

I don't know where they got the guts to laugh at those who have 4 wives. I recently discovered a site: http://www.reformation.com/ warning Christians not to be hypocrites.

When the Bible speaks of 1 husband, 1 wife, 1 family, it is because this is a sacred relationship before God. Although wives are to submit to their husbands, both men and women are created equal before God. The husband gets the whole of his wife, and the wife gets the whole of her husband. There is no third person or forth person with equal level involved in this matrimony. 

It must not be a doubt, that the services of the Church, must be performed by Christians.

I recall recent discussion with a pastor regarding this issue. She suggested that because non-christians could have a chance of converting during such servitude, it must not be restricted from them.

If that is the case, why then the principle of marriages among christians only? Is that not hypocrisy? or perhaps family matter is more important more serious?  

If we despise Judas, we must know that we were once like him. If we do not acknowledge this, the more we despise Judas, the more we become like him.

One who does not wish to face his/her own sins is one who has not yet fully repented. Such is the servant and slave of Satan.

If someone thinks that the church should ingratiate itself with or please others so that they will serve or serve gladly, then this someone should shut up and be kept from the holy servitude of God. Such person has no place among the children of God.

No one is supposed to come to help, we all come to serve God under His mercy.

The Church should first maintain faithfulness to God's word and then with its best effort and wisdom, distribute care to others, to those who are truly in need, and not those who are pretending to be in need for it is obvious that their need is something else.