The film contends that even though the second edition of the RSV dropped the word “homosexual,” the damage had already been done. Other English versions like the NIV, NASB, and the Living Bible followed the original RSV. This is the part where the film makes a wild jump. It presents the argument that because Billy Graham subsequently began recommending the Living Bible in his crusades, evangelicals began despising homosexuals based on a mistranslation of 1 Corinthians 6:9. They accuse evangelicals of weaponizing their disgust by teaming up with Republicans to wage a culture war on homosexuals. The film’s argument is specious on its face. 

When the theatrical trailer for the gay-affirming documentary 1946 first appeared over a year ago, it landed with a splash. The filmmakers claimed that their project “casts significant doubt on any biblical basis” for condemning homosexuality as sin. Even though no one had yet seen the movie, the trailer alone generated an explosion of responses from both fans and critics. Many evangelical critics took to their keyboards and social media feeds to interrogate the film, some of them including the obvious caveat that they hadn’t viewed the actual documentary yet.
Over the last year and up until the film’s premier last month, 1946 has been screened in a variety of film festivals around the country and has racked up accolades, including the audience awards at Doc NYC, the Cleveland Int’l Film Festival, and OUTfest. Parade magazine has ranked 1946 among the top films of 2023. The director, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, has said that she wishes to gin up enough interest in the film to have it distributed on major streaming platforms and perhaps even considered for an Oscar.
That may be wishful thinking. Nevertheless, The Guardian reports that the film has garnered an “outpouring” of support from viewers. It has taken in over 1,700 donations on GoFundMe in excess of $150,000 to publicize the film. The director Roggio aims to screen the film at “churches and community centers” and to distribute a new workbook so that churchgoers can do further study on the claims of the film. Roggio tells The Guardian, “We want millions of people to be able to access this information.”
Read More
Related Posts:

The Christian knows that his ultimate joy is found in a saving relationship with God through Christ Jesus. The joy that the Christian knows in daily communion with God is greater than anything the world could offer (1 Peter 1:8) and provides the Christian with the ability to enjoy all of life’s good gifts in proportion.

In my work with pastors and Christian leaders, we talk about all the challenges that come with leading organizations. These discussions usually end up touching on the need for Christians to deal with powerful and conflicting emotions in a godly way. But for many of the men I work with, a basic biblical understanding of emotions is something they’ve never even thought about. So when the topic of emotions comes up, I often get the question, “What are the basic (or core) emotions?” I answer with my working list: fear, loneliness, anger, sadness, hurt, joy, disdain, guilt, and shame. The response to this list is usually, “Well, how can I feel as much joy and as little of the rest of the list as possible?” It is that question that often leads Christians into the despair of hedonism or cynicism.
Definitions of Despair
Hedonism is a philosophy of living—sometimes adopted explicitly and sometimes implicitly—that places the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good. Because pleasure typically produces (momentary) joy, hedonists think they have found a way to maximize joy. But in the end, this way of living ends in despair.
Researchers have two ways of describing the despair that hedonists eventually experience. The first is hedonic adaptation. This is what hedonists experience when they adapt to their current level of pleasure, resulting in both a malaise and a need to pursue even more pleasure. The cycle is never-ending and ultimately unsatisfying. The second term that describes the eventual despair of the hedonist is anhedonia. This is more of a medical term that describes the apathy and numbness that some hedonists experience after the unbridled pursuit of pleasure. It turns out that God did not design our bodies to experience nonstop worldly pleasure without becoming numb to it.
Read More
Related Posts:

And so does rejection of a gay self-conception united to one who is united to Christ. We cannot be those who apply good and necessary consequence to our doctrine, yet refuse to apply it to our ethics. Even though in this life Christians still battle and experience temptations and sin, such sins do not define us anymore. Those things are who we were, not who we now are. What defines those of us who have been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is that we are in Christ.

This year, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will once again be addressing issues pertaining to human sexuality in the church. This is because sexuality has become one of the primary points of conflict between the church and the culture of this age and, rather than being conformed to the world, the church of Christ must stand firm upon the truth of God’s word. One of the many questions facing the church today is whether or not a Christian may identify with a homosexual or transgender self-conception. More simply, can a Christian identify as a “gay Christian”? While there have been many excellent resources written on this topic, to my knowledge, none have interacted directly with the interpretative principle of “Good and Necessary Consequence.” When viewed through the lens of good and necessary consequence we will see that for a Christian to adopt a homosexual or transgender self-conception is an unbiblical contradiction in terms and must be rejected by those who view scripture as the only rule of our faith and practice. So, it is helpful to begin with understanding this principle.
Historically, Reformed Christians have adhered to and applied Scripture in accordance with a principle known as Good and Necessary Consequence. This is the approach to Scripture that teaches that we are to believe and obey not only those things that are explicitly stated, but also that which may be deduced or inferred from Scripture as a necessary implication. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF I.6, emphasis mine). Some doctrines and commandments are spelled out for us, while others are implied or systematically pieced together. For instance, there isn’t a single verse citation we could make to spell out the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet by good and necessary consequence we rightly deduce that there is one God who exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are the same in substance, equal in power and glory. This same principle that leads us to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity likewise has led Reformed churches throughout history to believe in and practice infant baptism, the regulative principle of worship, and Sunday as the Christian’s Sabbath. None of these doctrines are explicitly spelled out in the New Testament, yet we believe they are rightly deduced from Scripture by this principle of good and necessary consequence.
This principle can be demonstrated in numerous places in the New Testament, but the clearest example can be seen in Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees found in each of the synoptic Gospels.[i] In Matthew 22:23-32 the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a hypothetical scenario involving the obscure case law of levirate marriage, hoping to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection is ridiculous. Jesus’ response to their denial of the resurrection was to quote to them Exodus 3:6 where, when speaking to Moses at the burning bush, God introduces himself by declaring “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” With this single quotation, Jesus demonstrates that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” and silences the Sadducees. Jesus proves that there is a resurrection by citing the fact that God introduced himself to Moses by saying “I am the God of Abraham,” and not “I was the God of Abraham.” His entire argument hinges on the conjugation of one verb in the present tense instead of the past tense, which is sufficient to demonstrate the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Significantly, the passage from which Jesus quotes, Exodus 3, isn’t explicitly about the resurrection – it’s the call of Moses to be Israel’s deliverer. The passage doesn’t even mention words like “resurrection,” “heaven,” “hell,” “soul,” or “eternity,” all terms we associate with the resurrection. And yet Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees is to say, “You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” This harsh rebuke demonstrates that this is not merely a principle for Jesus alone to use in interpreting Scripture, but one he expected them to have applied as well. No Christian has a right to object, “If you can’t show me the Bible verse that says it, then I’m not required to believe or obey it.” On the contrary, if a truth or commandment may be proven from Scripture by good and necessary consequence, then yes, you are required to believe and obey it.
As Reformed Christians, this is a principle that ought to be kept in mind as we consider the question of a Christian’s identity. At the 47th General Assembly of the PCA, the assembly voted to declare the Nashville Statement to be a biblically faithful declaration on human sexuality. And yet, there were many who objected. Particularly, one stated reason was opposition to Article 7’s denial which reads, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”[ii] Put simply, the Nashville Statement says that it is unbiblical to identify oneself as a “gay Christian.” While this statement is not explicitly spelled out for us in any one verse, it does not need to be because it is rightly deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence.
One of the places we see this most clearly is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul writes, “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. 11 And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (NASB). Notice the way Paul speaks of these Christians in verse 11. You were these things. Significantly, Paul does not merely say you used to practice these things. He goes beyond that and addresses their identity. It’s also significant that Paul says “you were” and not “you are.” In Greek the imperfect indicative ταῦτά τινες ἦτε makes the statement even more forceful, highlighting the radical change that has now taken place through union with Christ. The descriptions of verses 9 and 10 are who these Corinthian Christians were, not who they now are.  And this is a vital distinction. In Jesus’ own rebuke of the Sadducees this same kind of distinction was sufficient to demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and warrant the harsh rebuke that his opponents did not know the Scriptures. God is the God of Abraham. And who are Christians? You were adulterers, homosexuals, drunkards, and covetous, etc. And by good and necessary consequence the text teaches that this is not who a Christian now is. This is because to be washed by Jesus Christ cleanses us from more than just legal guilt. If you have been washed by Christ, you have a new identity.
This is why it is correct to say that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception or identity is unbiblical. As Reformed Christians, we cannot be those who apply the principle of good and necessary consequence to our doctrines of God, worship, and the church, and yet fail to apply it to our ethics.
Read More

[i] For a full treatment of good and necessary consequence, see By Good and Necessary Consequence by Ryan McGraw (Reformation Heritage Books).
[ii] You can access the full Nashville Statement here: https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/