In Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples the night he was betrayed, he told them that we testify. But we are not alone. The Spirit testifies along with our testimony (John 15:26–27). “The Spirit of truth,” he said, “will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8, 13). Yes, we must prepare ourselves to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15). Yes, we must engage opponents with gentleness and patience (2 Tim. 2:24–25). Yes, we must reason with others and explain and give evidence (Acts 17:2–3). But the Spirit is the one shouldering the burden of bringing others across the finish line. Not us. 

I want to tell you why you will never be able to change anyone’s mind on the truth of any spiritual issue.
This may sound strange coming from someone who has given his life for the defense of the true story of reality—the biblical story—and who, for nearly half a century, has worked to persuade critics that Christianity is worth thinking about. But it’s true. I have been powerless.
There’s a reason for what, at first glance, appears to be my personal ineptitude. I want you to consider what the biblical record says about our opposition—that is, the forces arrayed against us.
The devil, commanding spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), employs demonic schemes to deceive the whole world (Rev. 12:9), blinding the minds of the unbelieving so they might not see the light of the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4). Thus, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).
Paul tells Timothy that those in opposition to the gospel are in “the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25–26). He therefore tells Timothy not to be quarrelsome, but to be patient and gentle with his opponents, “if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare.”
Did you notice something about that last passage? God is the active agent who clears away the deceptive demonic fog and brings people to repentance, not us. That’s why Luke says of Lydia, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14).
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Written by J. Lance Acree |
Monday, December 13, 2021
For example, Francis S. Collins wrote a foreword for Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, in which he espoused a theology of Christianity free of any historical interest in the Genesis creation account.  But as we see in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, without a historical First Adam as our first covenantal representative there can be no historical Last Adam, and hence no salvation—for anyone, at any point in history.

Christians do not need to adopt the Neo-Marxist theory of race as a social construct in order to do battle against the CRT of Neo-Marxism. It is better to recognize the truth that distinct races do exist in objective reality, and that good and bad attributes become characteristics of races as a result of the religion that dominates them.  This includes both black and white. 
After reading a number of books on Critical Race Theory (CRT) by evangelical and reformed authors, I have become convinced that sometimes good men get it wrong.  Some of the writers I respect the most are saying that the existence of distinct human races is not real.  It is just a social construct.
In his recent post (Race is Real and Not a Social Construct, October 14, 2021), Larry Ball referenced writers quoted above, who are doubtless asserting that race is not real because its scientific basis is in debate.  The debate among scientists rages around values of an abstract probability (Fst) and what constitutes a “sub-species.”[i]
In western culture, the concept of race was given a veneer of scientific legitimacy by Charles Darwin, the title of whose best-known work is usually abbreviated as On the Origin of Species, but the title continues with race-grounding language: by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.  The theory of evolution he espoused was, and remains to this day, inherently race-centric and inextricably racist.  He himself acknowledged this racist element when he pointed out (in his less well-known work The Descent of Man) his theory’s implications with regard to white supremacy:[ii]
The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution.  Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephants, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals.  But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct.  At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.  At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Prof. Shaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated.  The break between man and his nearest allies will then be the wider, or it will intervene between man and a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Close reading of the final half of this section reveals that Darwin considered only white-skinned Caucasians to be civilized, and therefore destined (through “the general principle of evolution”) to “almost certainly” exterminate and replace the “savage” (non-Caucasian) races.  Scholarly research shows that this intrinsic white supremacy was a driving force in the formulation of Nazi racism.[iii]  ‘There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.’
Since Darwin published his theory, many have attempted to forge a savvy syncretism between Christianity and evolution, perhaps feeling intellectually ashamed under the constant bombardment of evolution propaganda.  That kind of effort inevitably leads to gutting Christianity until it is unrecognizable.  For example, Francis S. Collins wrote a foreword for Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution,[iv] in which he espoused a theology of Christianity free of any historical interest in the Genesis creation account.  But as we see in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, without a historical First Adam as our first covenantal representative there can be no historical Last Adam, and hence no salvation—for anyone, at any point in history.
The person who avidly endorsed this book to me also asked me, “Why save Genesis?”  They clearly felt the hopelessness of rationally integrating evolution with biblical history—and had decided to throw Genesis away.  If I remember correctly, I responded, “I can think of about fifty reasons to ‘save’ Genesis.”  One of them would be to preserve an alternative to the metanarrative and religious dogma of evolution (with its two Big Invisible Friends, MegaTime and Chance).  This has become the Theory of Everything, the Religion of the Age, despite the obvious fact that it requires believing the Gambler’s Fallacy to be true when we know scientifically that it is false.
Devotion to evolution also requires persistently avoiding a glaringly obvious scientific fact: the origin of a species has never been observed and recorded, even though the species generation rate must be significant.  This is the classic null result. A couple of null results in the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 abruptly ended the theory of “luminiferous aether.”  Not so with the supposedly scientific theory of evolution.  Across all the fishponds and aquariums, all the pastures and backyard chicken houses around the world, we see a continuous stream of null results.  Where is a newly originated and reproductively independent species?
We all hear when someone discovers the two-headed calf or a two-headed snake in the barn; but we never hear of a completely new and reproductively independent species appearing among the cattle in the pasture or the goldfish in the bowl.  Over millennia of livestock domestication and managed breeding across the animal and plant kingdoms across the globe, not one record has emerged that indicates the spontaneous origin of a new and independent species from an existing one.  We are told that evolution is one of the most powerful forces among all living things; yet no one has won a Nobel prize for documenting a recent origin.  No ancient texts supply a hint of an observed origin.  All we get instead is romanticized but ambiguous “flex-splanations” such as “speciation” among interbreeding finches in the Galapagos.[v]  I have often thought of writing a book entitled The Beak of the Acrees: A Romantic Story of Scholastic Sleight of Hand.
But there is something else curiously missing.  Despite the estimation that over 99% of earth’s species have gone extinct, no evolutionist publishes a mathematical (Fibonacci) model of species origins; the correspondingly high species origination rate (that must necessarily exceed the high extinction rate) to produce the millions of species we now observe alive and well.  We are bombarded with the output of population models and climate models, but no species origination models.
And with any systemic outcome like racism, we should (if we are rational and system thinkers) look for systemic inputs.  And few inputs to our society have been more systematic than the fawning exaltation of evolution in just about every high school and college biology class.  What student makes it to a diploma without multiple doses of this theory crammed down their throats?  The state has installed its one religion.  This formal propaganda is reinforced with a steady stream of film and song riddled with evolution dogma.  The pope must be jealous.
This may be what Ball is thinking of when he says race is real, but that would require him to confound race with racism.  Racism is certainly real—it’s a real and measurable characteristic of a population systemically indoctrinated with the inherently racist theory of evolution.  If all of humanity were, as Ball says, of one race, then the term is useless slang; “race” becomes a synonym of “human.”  Like the word “stuff,” it denotes a categorical distinction without significance.  But race is a fiction that persists, a fiction useful for secular propaganda purposes.
All this means that for Christians the widespread use of the phrase “systemic racism” offers an opportunity: to (graciously but firmly) point out to our pagan friends the systematic indoctrination in the intrinsically racist theory/religion of evolution.  This is a kind of paraclete work, and it’s a work of love: walking hand in hand with our friend while he walks in the wrong direction.  The path seems right to him, but we know it leads to death.  And when our friend is standing at the end of the path, staring into the empty pit and feeling the devastating death in his soul, we must be standing there with him, holding his hand.
What, Where, When and How questions are how we walk alongside.[vi]  We may politely ask, Francis Schaeffer fashion, where and when the origin of a reproductively independent species has been scientifically documented?  How many more billions of null results are required to make evolution a suspect theory?  To ask what is preventing people from tearing down the two statues of the well-known white supremacist Charles Darwin?  To ask what “chance” really is?  To lovingly hold their hand as their intellectual house of cards collapses in their hands—and then offer them real hope through the historical last Adam who has mercifully fulfilled the covenant office of the first Adam.
J. Lance Acree is in his 33rd year of service as a Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.  He researches preventable human error and lives with his wife of 41 years in Clinton, Tennessee.

[i] Faulk, Ryan. “Variation Within and Between Races – The Alternative Hypothesis.” Accessed December 7, 2021, https://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/variation-within-and-between-races/.
[ii] See Chapter VI, “On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man”, 1871
[iii] Weikart, Richard. “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought.” German Studies Review 36, no. 3 (2013): 537–56. https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2013.0106.  Kelly, Alfred. The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914. UNC Press Books, 2012.  Bergman, Jerry. The Darwin Effect: It’s Influence on Nazism, Eugenics, Racism, Communism, Capitalism & Sexism. New Leaf Publishing Group, 2014.
[iv] Giberson, Karl W., Harper One, 2008.,
[v] Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Reprint edition. New York, NY: Vintage, 1995.
[vi] Good, Mark C. Real Talk: Creating Space for Hearts to Change. Sisters, OR: Deep River Books LLC, 2017.

The Bible treats the issue of human sexuality as one of primary importance. It is a salvation issue. Those who practice, teach and encourage sexual sin of any kind without repentance are in great eternal danger. This is not simply an issue of differing interpretation between brothers and sisters in Christ. It is not something on which we can agree to disagree and yet remain in fellowship. If we are to stand firm for the truth of the gospel in our generation, we need to first recognise the nature of the issue at stake. We need to undertake theological triage and treat the issue of human sexuality with the seriousness that it deserves.

There is no greater internal challenge facing the church in the UK than the pressure to revise the orthodox historic teaching on human sexuality and accept and affirm same-sex relationships. Some denominations have already decided to perform or bless same-sex marriages, including the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church. The Baptist Union still formally upholds the biblical understanding of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual relationship but allows individual churches to perform same-sex marriages if they wish. The Church of England is in a lengthy process of consultation and deliberation (Living in Love and Faith) as to whether to allow gay marriage, and five bishops recently broke cover to demand that the church revise its teaching and practice to allow same-sex marriages. The Bishop of Oxford reiterated his support for same-sex marriage, and his re-reading of Scripture to justify this, in an article in the Telegraph on Saturday. 
In essence, those who want to change the teaching and practice of the church take the view that loving homosexual partnerships are pleasing to God and ought to be celebrated and affirmed. They argue that the Biblical teaching condemning homosexual practice is either limited to abusive homosexual sex and does not prohibit same-sex relationships akin to marriage, or that the Bible’s teaching has been superseded in the present day, either by extrapolation of a claimed ‘redemptive trajectory’ or the assertion that in the light of developments in science, psychology and societal attitudes the Holy Spirit is saying something different to the church today from what he said in the Scriptures when they were first written. Some of those making these arguments claim to be evangelicals committed to the authority of Scripture, such as Steve Chalke and Jayne Ozanne.
I will not provide a comprehensive rebuttal of these arguments in this post. Suffice it to say that the idea that the Biblical passages condemning homosexual sex are confined to abusive relationships has been discredited by scholars of all theological persuasions. The Bible consistently teaches from Genesis to Revelation that sex was given by God exclusively for heterosexual marriage, which was created for the procreation of children and the modeling of the eternal relationship between Christ and his church, not merely for the psychological wholeness or personal fulfillment of men and women. There is no ‘redemptive trajectory’ argument that could be applied to homosexual relationships because redemption restores God’s good creation. The abolition of slavery cannot be equated with gay marriage because there was no slavery in pre-fall creation. Homosexuality was never part of the original good creation, as Romans 1v24-27 makes clear. The idea that the Holy Spirit is saying something different to the church today would be to entirely undermine the doctrine of Scripture and to claim that God is either a liar or a being who changes his mind about sin.
My purpose is this post is rather to argue for the significance of this issue. I am increasingly convinced that the affirmation of the biblical teaching on human sexuality is a primary issue, not a secondary issue over which honest Christians may disagree in interpretation and conscience. It is not in the same category as many ‘disputable matters’ that evangelicals are used to treating as ‘secondary,’ for example issues such as baptism, church government, eschatology, women’s ministry, charismatic gifts, etc. Over such issues, it is possible to disagree without breaking fellowship, as the disagreement does not indicate that a person cannot be accepted as a believer in the Lord Jesus. Such issues may be of ecclesiological importance, but they are not determinative of soteriology, in contrast to issues such as the deity of Jesus, his bodily resurrection, and justification by faith alone, which are essential to salvation.
In several major talks this year I have made the assertion that the issue of human sexuality is a primary issue, with consequences for how we view those who seek to argue for the acceptance and affirmation of same-sex relationships in the church. I made my views clear in my plenary talk at the European Leadership Forum in May, on ‘What is an Evangelical,’ and in my Keswick Lecture at the Keswick Convention in July. I made the same assertion at the recent FIEC Leaders’ Conference preaching fromJude v1-16.
These are the reasons why I think that human sexuality is a primary gospel issue, and the implications that should flow from this:
1 The New Testament states that it is a primary salvation issue.
The only reason for believing that homosexuality is a primary gospel issue is because this is the way that the New Testament treats it. To be more precise, the New Testament makes clear that a person who commits sexual sin without repentance, believing it to be morally good and acceptable to God, thereby showing that they are outside the Kingdom of God. Their behaviour is to be taken as categorical evidence that they are not converted believers in the Lord Jesus and have no right to bear the name of ‘Christian.’ They are either unbelievers or apostates who have fallen from their profession of faith.
The principle that high-handed (ie proud and unrepented) sexual sin disqualifies from the Kingdom of God is thus true of all sexual sin, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Some of the New Testament references refer to ‘sexual immorality’ in a broad sense, which includes homosexual sex, but other references explicitly state that homosexual sex disqualifies a person from the Kingdom of God.
Ephesians 5v3-7 states:
‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.’
In these verses, Paul makes quite clear that people who profess to be Christians with their lips but practice sexual immorality with their bodies without repentance have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ. They are those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ about Jesus but who do not truly know him, and he will cast them into judgment as evil doers. The gospel does not just forgive our sins but delivers us from our sins. A person who continues to sin sexually after conversion without repentance, sorrow, grief, and efforts to resist future temptation is showing that they are not truly regenerated. They remain dead in their trespasses and sins.
Revelation 21v6-8 makes exactly the same point, contrasting those who will enter the new creation because they have maintained their faith in Christ with those who have continued to live a life of sin:
‘He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.”
In exactly the same way as Ephesians 5v5, Revelation 21v8 makes clear that those who unrepentantly continue in sexual sin, which includes homosexual practice, will be cast into judgement rather than enter the kingdom. Those who ‘live in sin’ can have no hope of living in the eschatological Kingdom of God – unless they repent and turn from their sin.
In 1 Corinthians 6, the exclusion of those who continue in homosexual sex without repentance from the Kingdom of God is made explicit. The wider context concerns a case of high-handed heterosexual sin committed by a man who is proud of what he is doing and who refuses to repent. In 1 Corinthians 6v9-10 Paul states that his sin, and the sins of others who are unrepentant, will exclude them from the Kingdom:
‘Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’
Paul could not be clearer. Men who continue to have sex with other men without repentance are excluded from the Kingdom of God.
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