We do not say that Israel is wholly right in its tactics or generally, nor that [Fitzgerald] is obligated to support her, only that his opposition to her ought to be more honest and careful in its sources, and that he not be so quick to suggest those who might support her are derelict in their faith on that account.

The Aquila Report has released its most read articles of 2023. Number 19 on the list is “Are Evangelicals Selling Their Souls for Israel?” by Jim Fitzgerald, a missionary and Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) minister who believes that evangelical support for Israel is mistaken. Fitzgerald is rightly aghast at the killing of civilians that has attended the war, and denounces the October 7th massacres. But these virtues are outweighed by some glaring faults in his article.
He uncritically accepts Hamas’ figures about the number of civilian deaths. Scripture is clear that murder and lying often accompany each other (Ps. 52:2; Prov. 6:16-19; Matt. 26:59; Jn. 8:44), so that people who do the former are suspectable of the latter. It is easy to lie and hard to kill, and if someone has a sufficiently seared conscience to do the latter, he is apt to have no qualms about the former. Scripture is clear as well that we are to have nothing to do with the wicked—and Hamas is in the foremost ranks of that category—and that listening to or associating with them has a corrosive effect and leads to righteousness and truth being overthrown (Prov. 1:10-16; 4:14-17; Prov. 29:12; 1 Cor. 15:33; comp. Ps. 1:1; Prov. 25:5). We should close our ears to all Hamas’ claims, therefore, for their wickedness has forfeited their right to be heard.
But Fitzgerald thinks Hamas’ claims verified by the statements of a single named person, a cardiologist named Dr. Sabra:
How can anyone be so heartless as to say the number dead is not accurate? I think the number is understated.
The attentive reader will note that is opinion, not testimony, and consists only of emotional rhetoric without any evidence in support; further, that it involves an ad hominem attack against anyone who dares think that murderous terrorists might exaggerate civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. Fitzgerald believes the point is buttressed by a nameless “many humanitarian workers” “making the same claim,” and by Israel’s own testimony of the amount of ordinance it has dropped on Gaza, some 30,000 tons as of his article in late November.
That last argument from sheer volume is weak: no amount of ordinance will kill anyone if they leave the target area. Israel issued a blanket warning to evacuate North Gaza before opening its main campaign, and it warns civilians near targets to evacuate before a strike by call, text message, or “roof knocking.” Actually, on technical grounds this arguably proves the opposite of what Fitzgerald thinks. Rather than demonstrating Israel’s “wholesale slaughter of civilians,” as he asserts, it demonstrates its firepower is being used in a way that has resulted in vastly fewer casualties than would be expected given the amount of ordinance dropped.
Without getting too much into the minutiae of what munitions Israel has used or the finer points of the many factors that affect the extent of damage done by explosive blasts and fragmentation, we can nonetheless get a rough idea of how much devastation can be wrought by that amount of bombing. To use the example of a single common munition, the pressures from a Mk. 82 500 pound bomb are enough to collapse reinforced concrete structures about 52 feet from the point of impact, and to collapse other buildings at twice that distance.[1] Those represent blast areas of about a fifth of an acre and three fourths of an acre, respectively, and the area within which fragments may kill or wound is far larger: there is an estimated 10% risk of incapacitating wounding as far as 820 feet from the point of impact, an area of some 48.5 acres.[2] Israel had dropped the equivalent of 120,000 such bombs as of Fitzgerald’s writing, enough to ravage pretty much the entirety of Gaza’s approximately 90,240 acres of territory, which has a density of about 25 people per acre.
When Fitzgerald then says that “a genocide is taking place right before our evangelical eyes,” we might reply that the claim is incredible. If that is what they are attempting, the Israelis are the most inept murderers in the history of the world. Israel has the most advanced weapons, planes, targeting and surveillance systems, munitions, etc., and has dropped about enough ordinance to flatten Gaza and kill its entire populace—and yet she has not done that. There is no way of knowing how many people Israel has killed, exactly, since nigh well everyone insists on taking Hamas’ figures at face value, and since most reporting makes no effort to distinguish civilians and Hamas fighters. But the large point remains that Israel has used enough firepower to actually kill much of the entire Gazan populace, had she desired to do so in a fit of genocidal rage. Instead she has focused those efforts on Hamas positions and accompanied them with repeated efforts to warn noncombatants to avoid being caught in them.
The point is not to argue that this Israeli effort is the best approach to fighting Hamas or responding to the larger political situation. The point is that it is false to say that Israel is engaged in genocide when it is deliberately acting to not kill civilians by general and particular warnings, and when it is trying to limit its attacks to its armed opponents. There is a moral difference between intentionally murdering civilians and accidentally killing civilians while fighting an honorless enemy that does not wear uniforms and readily hides among them. And that difference is the difference between a crime and a tragedy, between an inexcusable and intentional act on the one hand and an unintended consequence of a morally-permissible action on the other.
Read More
Related Posts:

[Editor’s Note: This is a letter from a member to her church explaining the reasons she left a church she loved after being a member for eight years. We are publishing the letter anonymously to avoid publicly impugning anyone’s integrity and to allow the content of the letter to be read on its merits.]
I pray for God to send a Spirit of healing to work among his church. And that moving forward, there will be a stirring of the Spirit to turn our attention to the condition of our own hearts, rather than to try and discern the condition of the heart of the person sitting next to us. Scripture describes our hearts as stony ground, and God’s Word as a plough. I urge you, as I urge myself: Do not shrink back from Christ’s hand at the plow in your own heart. It is from Him that true enlightenment of the heart (i.e., love) comes, not from humanity, not from cultural sensitivity, or anything else.

To the Beloved at My Home Church,
It is with considerable trepidation that I take this opportunity to inform you, my brothers and sisters, that I have left my local PCA home church. The reasons why I have left are relevant to this collection of essays; therefore, although I am no longer a member among you, I hope I might be given a voice alongside you, to describe my experiences at my PCA church which have led me to this point.
After having been a member/regular attender at this PCA church for close to 8 years, I began seeing a lot of changes in our preaching and worship that seemed to detract from the message of God’s free grace, and instead place more and more emphasis on issues of black and white relations. In particular, I felt a sense of antagonism towards white people coming from the pulpit. Many unfair assumptions were being made about a broad group of people based solely on one physical attribute: their skin color.
I acknowledge that sin can be passed on generationally. However, I put forth that it is from Adam whom I have inherited my flesh. And it’s because of my union with him that sin comes to me. He was the first fruit of death and condemnation and, before I was saved, I was merely a seed after his kind. I know almost nothing of my own “white” heritage; but I don’t need to know whether or not my ancestors were involved in American slavery, or segregation, or racism, to fathom my sin. I already know that I stand utterly condemned under the federal headship of my first parents in the Garden.
This is Truth, and it is irrespective of skin color. Black people and white people are the seed of Adam. We are all guilty. Therefore, based on what I know of scripture, any clamor for “justice” is a fool’s errand. We think we want justice, but if we got what we thought we wanted, we would all stand rightly condemned, with no hope, before a God whose real standard is complete, perfect holiness. Who among white people or black people could measure up to this standard? God’s holiness will not be satisfied with changes in our worship music, the racial demographics of our congregation, or our church’s culture. No; the standard is complete, perfect holiness–nothing less will meet God’s requirements. And His requirements are just.
We all desperately need to hear assurance of God’s grace. His grace for sinners. I don’t want justice for myself, because I don’t want to receive the just penalty for my sins. I don’t want justice for a person who’s been victimized, and I don’t want justice even for a person who is a victimizer. Because I can’t say, “God’s marvelous grace for me, but justice for somebody else.” What we all really need is to hear grace preached; not to be assured of our condemnation but to be assured that there is a covering for our sins in the precious blood of Jesus. We ourselves satisfy none of God’s demands for holiness; but the precious blood of Jesus satisfies them all.
We cannot usher in the Kingdom of God through our own merit, our own agendas, our own efforts. If we, as believers, are truly sensitive to the Holy Spirit of God, then He will teach us how to love our neighbor, black or white. If the leadership of our PCA church feels strongly that the congregation does not love our neighbor, then one must ask: Why not teach us how to become re-sensitized to the gentle whispers and promptings of the Holy Spirit? Why not preach and pray for revival in the Church, and acknowledge the need for a super-natural refreshment that only The Spirit can provide? Why focus on trying to guess whether or not the white individuals at our church are loving enough towards black people, when we could together beseech the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) who alone has the power to move the hearts of men?
When Paul went to Athens, and (supposedly) engaged with the Greeks by using their own culture to reach them, we see that it was not because Paul respected or valued their culture. It was because he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw there (Acts 17:16). This was not the sentiment of a man who felt that all human cultures have something valuable to give, and that a worshipful knowledge of the True God should be based out of a culture comfortable for those Athenians. Paul merely pointed out that their culture acknowledged the True God completely by accident. And he used that observation to open their eyes to their own idolatry-riddled surroundings. That, I believe, is an apt description of all human culture. Culture reflects the idol-prone human heart. And to make culture such a large focus from the pulpit of a church of the Trinitarian God of the Bible leaves so much to be desired.
Now we come to me. I never wanted to cause conflict. So, I sat with my troubles for many years, and attempted to discern if what I was hearing was really true….. was I secretly a racist because my skin is white? After much soul searching and investigating the scriptures, I believe the answer is “no”. I do not feel this is a self-deception.  My conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit.
However, I was still hearing preaching from the pulpit which condemned me for this reason. When I tried to express my concerns to people of authority over our worship services, as well as in my prayer group, I received more pushback and more slights against my character. Had I been a stranger among you, I might not have been so surprised or so hurt. But these were people to whom I had made myself intimately known over many years. People whom I considered my brothers and sisters in the most real way possible. Very few took my own conscience, or my own relationship with the Holy Spirit, seriously.
I could have engaged more (as I know some of you are now attempting to do in my absence) to take a stand against the party spirit that is seeping into our PCA church from the surrounding culture. But I am not strong. I do apologize to you, for my weakness and my cowardice. I found I couldn’t stand against even a little persecution and exclusion in my own church. So, under the advice of Godly men who know me and know my limitations, I decided to leave. But this has been a confusing and difficult experience. I can’t stop loving you as my brothers and sisters, and it is hard for me to understand and accept why I can no longer be with you.
If there is no unity in Christ, there is no unity. If some “thing” is destroying our unity in Christ, whatever it happens to be, perhaps pursuing it is not good. Even good things can become idols.
My last words will be of blessing and caution to you. I pray for God to send a Spirit of healing to work among his church. And that moving forward, there will be a stirring of the Spirit to turn our attention to the condition of our own hearts, rather than to try and discern the condition of the heart of the person sitting next to us. Scripture describes our hearts as stony ground, and God’s Word as a plough. I urge you, as I urge myself: Do not shrink back from Christ’s hand at the plow in your own heart. It is from Him that true enlightenment of the heart (i.e., love) comes, not from humanity, not from cultural sensitivity, or anything else. Once our own hearts are broken by the Word, the Holy Spirit will grant us the loving unity with our brothers and sisters that we are longing for.
It is for the Lord to discern the hearts of men…. and when people attempt to discern the heart of their brother or sister on a human level, I can testify from my personal experiences at my PCA church over the last few years: there is a lot of room for error and hurt.
1 Corinthians 4:1-5:
This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.
 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.
I miss you all, and I love you. I am praying for God to comfort you during this difficult time.
With Love in Christ, I Remain Your Sister
Related Posts:

The authors of Overture 15, Westminster Presbytery, argue that ministers of the gospel are to be above reproach in their Christian character and self-conception and that a man would disqualify himself from ordained office in the PCA if he identified himself in terms associated with the LGBTQ+ movement or has a Gay self-conception.

I have been asked to write on why the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) presbyteries should formally vote to include the new paragraph, Overture 15 in the Book of Church Order 7-4:
Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
With my wife Rebecca, we were one of the first three missionary families sent out by the first General Assembly (GA) of the PCA in Birmingham, AL, in 1973. Thus, I was greatly moved by the GA speech of Palmer Robertson, a fellow missionary professor and a long-term friend, of around my age, who has been noting the growing and unique emphasis on homosexuality that he has seen in so many cultural expressions like television and public life. Like him, my conviction is that the issue will become the cause of serious Christian persecution. Clearly, we have to get this right—for ourselves and for the next Christian generation we are raising.
I will argue that presbyteries must vote in Overture 15 for two reasons: 1. For the integrity and purity of the ordained ministry; 2. for the clarity of the Gospel message we bring to the world and especially to the youth in our churches.

For the integrity and purity of the ordained ministry

We charge new candidates for ministry to “adorn the profession of the Gospel in your life, and to set a worthy example before the church” (BCO 24-5-4).
One cannot help but compare this to the words of TE Greg Johnson: 
…you wanna know about my sexual brokenness? I am happy to talk to you about what I talked about in the pulpit two weeks ago, and that I think is relevant to this conversation. I am a pornography addict. I have had a pornography addiction for 15 years. that pull is still as strong as it was. I’ve mortified this for 15 years and it still, you know, I see a computer terminal unmonitored and immediately my mind thinks, I want to look at porn. Fifteen years of strangling this thing, and it doesn’t die, it doesn’t go away…  
I know that if I look at one image, I’m going to look at a thousand. I know I’m not going to come up for air for hours.
The authors of Overture 15, Westminster Presbytery, argue that ministers of the gospel are to be above reproach in their Christian character and self-conception and that a man would disqualify himself from ordained office in the PCA if he identified himself in terms associated with the LGBTQ+ movement or has a Gay self-conception. Johnson’s “gay self-conception” is indicated by the small but significant detail that the spine of his book, Still Time To Care features the gay rainbow.
Some admire Johnson’s honesty and oppose Overture 15 because it is unfair that homosexuals alone be targeted since there are many other sinful conditions that need to be addressed that tempt ordained ministers. This year I was asked to evaluate a Ph.D. thesis by Jeffery Adams Moore whose very well argued and exegetically supported thesis is that there are three sins that Scripture specifically highlights as the most significant: the three are: “abortion, [and] assisted suicide [forms of murder]…and homosexuality.[1]  These sins “oppose the one-man, one-woman multiplication of humanity for earthly rule under the triune God’s heavenly rule. Such sins are inversions of the created order and resist the spreading of God’s image for his glory.”[2] Though a Baptist, soon-to-be Dr. Moore identifies among others John Calvin, Francis Turretin, Charles Hodge, Herman Bavinck, and Louis Berkhof as theologians adopting this conclusion. The gravity of this sin must also be understood in terms of its role in our present godless culture.

For the clarity of the Gospel message that we bring to the world and especially to the youth in our churches.

A second major issue regarding homosexuality, sometimes called “sexual androgyny” [the mixing of male and female] since it includes transgenderism, transvestitism, bi-sexuality, agenderism, drag, and cross-dressing, is not only whether it is, as such an immoral way of behaving but in what way does it deeply and fully express the worldview of paganism and thus has an important ideological status. In other words, without practicing androgynous sexuality, can one affirm it as valid, and thus be just as pagan as the small percentage of actual practitioners.
The paganization of Western culture began with the invasion of Eastern spirituality in the Sixties when people discovered personal, New Age “spirituality.” But for progressives that individual experience had to become a Western worldview, and some of the leaders knew what to do. The Jungian/Gnostic, June Singer, in 1977 made a programmatic statement that others are now putting into practice. Have you ever wondered why recently the LGBTQ agenda is now everywhere, being promoted as the great issue of contemporary social and moral rights, as professor Palmer Robertson pointed out at the GA? Why must children be taught to think this way in schools? Why is Disney committed to promoting it, at the expense of losing many parental customers? Why Drag Queens must be reading in happy hour to children in public libraries? Why has transexual Adm Rachel Levine, an overweight middle-age man and father of a number of children, appointed the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Sam Brinton, appointed as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy, shows up to work in the White House and in Paris in heels and a short dress and make-up and stiletto heels, and who boasts about his involvement in “puppy play,” that is, grown men putting on dog masks and behaving like submitted animals for sexual stimulus—why have these two been sent to represent the US government at the celebration  Bastille Day at the French Ambassador’s residence?
Sam Brinton wrote a scathing rebuke of federal law enforcement agencies for raiding Rentboy.com, a now-defunct website that reportedly ran an illegal prostitution ring that often sold the sexual services of young boys to much older clients.[3] He stated: “The raid on its headquarters has thrown many gay, bisexual, and transgender young adults into turmoil as their main source of income has been ripped, away due to irresponsible and archaic views of sex work.”[4]
The short-term answer to these questions is the Biden administration’s radical commitment to LGBTQ ideology. The long-term answer goes back to 1977 when June Singer asked: “Can the human psyche realize its own creative potential through building its own cosmology and supplying it with its own gods?”[5] The new cosmology would include, as Singer said, “the longed-for conjunction of the opposites,” and “a new androgynous sexuality.”[6]The spirituality of the Sixties, she declared programmatically:
…[since] we have at hand…all the ingredients we will need to perform our own new alchemical opus…[the great work, a term from satanist traditions]… [we will] fuse the opposites within us: “the archetype of androgyny appears in us as an innate sense of…and witness to…the primordial cosmic unity—functioning to erase distinction…this was nearly totally expunged from the Judeo-Christian tradition…and a patriarchal god-image.[7]
“Primordial cosmic unity” eliminates the very notion of a distinct divine creator, thus eradicates the biblical revelation of God. Singer understood that the spiritual Age of Aquarius had to become the Age of Androgyny, that the “new humanism” predicted by Carl Jung required the full acceptance of “androgynous sexuality.
This term, androgyny, is employed in a significant way by the great expert in the history of religions, the Romanian, Mircea Eliade who argues that androgyny is a religious universal or archetype of pagan priests or shamans that appears virtually everywhere and at all times in the world’s religions. Mircea Eliade explains the spiritual meaning of androgyny as “a symbolic restoration of chaos, of the undifferentiated unity that preceded the Creation.” The androgynous being thus sums up the very goal of the mystical, monistic quest, whether ancient or modern:
…androgyny in many traditional religions functions as “an archaic and universal formula for the expression of wholeness, the co-existence of the contraries, or coincidentia oppositorum . . . symboliz[ing] . . . perfection . . . [and] ultimate being. . . .[8]
Modern witches call for “a nonbinary look at Source itself,… finding our power as we reweave ourselves back into the reflection of god-herself, as the divine-androgen. [9] The androgyne is thus the physical symbol of the pagan spiritual goal, which is the merging of two seemingly distinct entities, the self and god, and a mystical return to the state of godhead prior to creation, which is the essence of idolatry.
This is the very same logic that Paul employs in Romans 1:18-27. The homosexual act exchanges the worship of God for the worship of creation. In creation, homosexuality is an inversion of God’s design for one-man, one-woman “fitted” sexual intimacy with openness to procreation. In redemption, same-sex sexuality fails to herald and signify the sacrificial redemptive relationship between Christ, the Bridegroom, and his bride, the church, as two distinct bodies united by grace.
That the pagan priesthood would be so identified, across space and time, with the blurring of sexual identity via homosexual androgyny indicates, beyond a doubt, the enormous priority paganism has given, and continues to give, to the undermining of God-ordained monogamous heterosexuality, and the divine image, and the enthusiastic promotion of androgyny in its varied forms.
Chapter 7 of the PCA Book of Church Order affirms that “teaching elders [must be] specially gifted, called and trained by God to preach…” If ever was needed this kind of worldview preaching and teaching it is surely now.
Are pastors who accept Side B thinking about homosexuality able to help students navigate through the worldview of androgynous sexuality as a fundamental opposition to biblical orthodoxy. Taking Greg Johnson as an example, he boasts, as a gay, celibate man, that not experiencing marriage in this life, is a foretaste of heaven. He sees celibacy as an “intrusion ethic,” an in-breaking of the ethics of the coming age into our present era, since in heaven “none of us will be married.”[10] This is not strictly speaking true. Though he holds up his life of celibacy as a sign of selfless Christian sacrifice, one may wonder if, in as subtle way, he uses celibacy not, as it should be, as a unique divine mission but, as, in a certain way, of maintaining his single homosexual lifestyle.[11] Perhaps a better way would be for Rev. Johnson to marry a godly Christian woman to better understand the importance of biblical heterosexual marriage. For Johnson, the mystery that moves him is that Jesus took him on “as his little brother,”[12] not his bride. For Paul, the profound mystery that God’s establishment of marriage in Genesis 2:22-25 expresses, is Christ, the bridegroom’s love for church. (Eph 5:31-2). In this sense, marriage will go on forever.
I end with a citation of my final paragraph of my review article of Greg Johnson’s book, Still Time to Care. “The call for cultural apologetics is not an appeal to pastors to preach politics! It is a matter of understanding the implications of our theology so we all can understand and live out those implications through the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit. A solid understanding of worldview is an increasingly great need in our nation’s churches and pulpits, which are abandoning orthodoxy in favor of cultural myths. They are turning away from God the Creator and Redeemer to celebrate depraved forms of pagan living. May we all speak clearly and boldly to Christians and non-Christians alike, with grace, humility, clarity, and power—following the example of the Apostle Paul.”[13] 
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] Jeffery Adams Moore, “Greater Sins: Are Certain Violations of God’s Moral Law Weightier Than Others?” A Dissertation Submitted to The Faculty Of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary In Candidacy For The Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy (Kansas City, Missouri May 2022), p. 301
[2] Ibid., p. 20.
[3] https://www.theblaze.com/news/brinton-lgbtq-child-prostitution
[4] https://www.theblaze.com/news/brinton-lgbtq-child-prostitution
[5] June Singer, Androgyny: Towards a New theory of sexuality (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1977), 237. Incredible, and never dying, this book is just as relevant today as it was initially. For Singer, there is no greater deed of mankind than to accept and integrate our opposites within. To know the androgyne is to unify the self.
[6] See the title of Singer’s book, Androgyny: Towards A New Theory Of Sexuality.
[7] Singer, Androgyny, 207.
[8] Mircea Eliade, “Androgynes,” The Encyclopedia of Religion, 154.
[9] “Getting Straight with Spirit,” Tommie StarChild, (PantheaCon 2020 conference agenda, workshop description), p.34.
[10] Still Time to Care, 100, 158
[11] I am thankful to Rev. Also Leon for this insight.
[12] Op.cit., 241.
[13] Peter Jones,  Still Time to Care About the Whole Gospel – TruthXchange  (March 2, 2022).
Related Posts: