Preaching To The Perverted

However, in a widely circulated video of Burrell preaching at a church in Houston, the singer says, "The perverted homosexual spirit, and the spirit of delusion and confusion ... has deceived many men and women." At one point, she also claims that homosexuals will die in 2017.

Preaching to the Perverted

Heb. 12:22-24 (here misunderstood and perverted) gives us a beautiful view of the various objects to which the Christian is come by faith, in contrast with Israel at Sinai. Each is distinguished from the preceding by the connecting particle "and," which clears away the confusion of "general assembly, and church etc. "Ye have come to mount Zion," he says, the mountain of grace, not to Sinai of law; "and to a living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem," the general image of heavenly hope; "and to myriads of angels, a universal assemblage" (the natural denizens on high); "and to a church of first-borns, enrolled in heaven" (by sovereign grace); "and to God, judge of all"; "and to spirits of just [men] made perfect; and to Jesus, mediator of a new (or, fresh) covenant; and to blood of sprinkling speaking better than Abel." The spirits of just men made perfect are beyond doubt the O.T. saints, expressly a company distinct from the "church of first-borns" as associated with Him who is in the highest sense the First-born. To say that the subject here "is unity not diversity" is to miss the mark and to assert a glaring error. "General assembly" or "universal assemblage" is a further description of "myriads of angels"; and "blood of sprinkling" is for a blessing on the earth (not to bring a curse like Abel's blood); whilst "a fresh covenant" is to comfort the Israel of the future when restored the virtue of the covenant will be as new as when their progenitors rejected the apostolic preaching of it.

Equally perverted is the plain truth of Heb. 11:39-40, wherein it is taught that the O.T. saints, though they obtained witness through faith did not receive the promise at Christ's coming, "God having foreseen some better thing for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us." We are both to enter on our respective place in glory together when He comes again; but to say that they are to share a "better thing" with us is to deprive the passage of its only possible meaning. God foresaw it for us, of which they had no notion whatever, any more than the writer sees the truth now.

Owens, Thomas a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was born in South Carolina Jan. 8 1787, and was the son of Thomas and Frances Owens. His parents took him to the Natchez country when young, and settled in what is now Jefferson County. Thomas was in early manhood perverted to vicious purposes. In his twenty-fourth year he became an earnest seeker of salvation from sin. As a preliminary step, he united with the Church in 1810, and was soon after converted while kneeling to receive the holy communion. He was soon encouraged by his brethren to take an active part in the social meetings of the Church. where he successfully commenced those extraordinary labors which made him so conspicuous in afterlife. He was admitted into the traveling connection Nov. 1, 1813, as a member of the Tennessee Conference, and was effective seventeen years, during which time he traveled four years in Alabama, four years in Louisiana, west of the Mississippi, and nine years in various parts of Mississippi. He was on the superannuated list thirty-eight years, but most of that time he rendered efficient service as a self-supporting minister. All who have succeeded him in his different fields of ministerial labor know what a deep and lasting impression his preaching and other kindred exercises made on the minds of all classes. He had learned by experience and practical observation all the avenues leading to the human heart, and he knew how to touch every chord of human sympathy. His native wit and genius cropped out everywhere. He said what other men said, and preached the same doctrines his brethren preached, but it was all said and preached in his own peculiar and attractive style. His genial face, the indescribable intonations of his voice, his apt illustrations and gestures, all combined to keep up an interest in his hearers. He died July 1, 1868. But few men of his talents ever accomplished a similar amount of good. See Minutes of the Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1868.

And the sum of what I have said thereupon, is this. They are bound to supply the church, with the ministration of prayers, or of pure and unpolluted offices, when the public service is corrupted, and prayers are poisoned, not only with idolatrous, but also with unrighteous and immoral mixtures. And with the ministry of the word, when they see dangerous and immoral practices are begun to be set up. And more still, when they are offered to be justified. Being obliged to this, when immoral practices are justified in some great and particular cases, which are like to involve the generality of persons. And higher obliged yet, when, for justification of the same in such particular cases, false teachers set themselves to vacate all the opposite moral duties, by undermining propositions and doctrinal salvos. All which still call louder for this ministration, if the immoral practices so justified, and doctrinally salved, are in themselves infamous, and a scandal to religion; or, if they have numbers of seducers and false guides, to recommend or persuade them; or, if they are pressed and forced upon all refusers, by a secular arm, and driven on by a violent and general persecution. When the breach is so great upon religion, and the danger is so terrible to the souls of men, and is like to make a general wast, and to seize and destroy such numbers of them: true ministers of religion, and guides of souls, ought not to be silent, and to sit still, under such wrongs done to both. But are bound, not to neglect the gift that is in them, by the laying on of hands, 1 Timothy 4. 14. But to stir it up, and that out of a spirit of love to religion and the church, and of power or courage without fear of dangers, as I observed from St. Paul, 2 Timothy 1, 6, 7. To give attendance to it, waiting on their ministry, Romans 12. 7. Not to be content merely to accept seasons, as put upon them; but to seek them, preaching the word, and being instant, in season, and out of season. 2 Timothy 4. 2. To give themselves wholly to these things, and to persevere and continue in performing them, that in so doing, they may both save themselves, and those that hear them, 1 Timothy 4. 15, 16.

1. Of his messengers. The priest is the messenger of the Lord of hosts, Malachi 2. 7. And St. Paul says, the Galatians received him, as an angel or messenger of God, Galatians 4: 14. And the bishops of the churches, are styled angels, Revelation 1. 20. Now, when a polluted and immoral worship is offered up to God, or when immoral practices are set up, and the plain sense of moral precepts is perverted or vacated to maintain them; God hath enough to say to men, both for caution and prevention, and also for their recovery from the same. And who shall tell them this, but his own messengers? And how should they tell it, but in the discharge of their ministrations? So that by their ministry, they must show them the horrible profanation of an immoral devotion, and teach and afford them a pure worship, which is according to his mind. And declare to them the true force and meaning of those moral laws and duties, which others have doctrinally glossed away and vacated, to the end they may warrantably and securely transgress them. As the messenger of the Lord of hosts, his lips ought to keep up knowledge among the people, and they are to seek the law, i.e. the true sense of it, as Grotius and others note, at his mouth, Malachi 2. 7. So that he is ministerially to open his mouth, not to shut it; to minister knowledge, not to pen it up and suppress it within himself: it being the part of an ill and unfaithful messenger, to seal up his lips, and conceal the message which he is charged with.

Thus doth their very office and station, of being God's ordinary and standing ministers, and public agents, and ambassadors, and representatives: oblige them to actual administrations in the foresaid cases. Their office, lies in supplying such administrations, which are the trust they have received from Christ, and the business which they are set for. He hath committed to us the administration of this reconciliation, saith St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5. 18. This faithful supply of such administrations, is called, fulfilling their ministry, as in St. Paul's caution to Archippus. Col. 4. 17. For to entrust his things with them, as ministers, or agents; is to trust that they will act therein, and administer the same unto his people. Accordingly they, who have received a ministry, are required to wait on their administration, Rom 12. 6, 7. Or, every man, as he hath received the gift of preaching, or ministry, &c. Even so to minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God, 1 Peter 4. 10, 11. Thus also they are called to preach the word, and discharge these ministrations, against teachers preaching to please men's lusts, and against people heaping up such teachers to themselves, that they may thereby fulfil, or make full proof of their ministry, (2 Timothy 4: 2, 3, 5). And are bid, not to neglect the gift that is in them, by imposition of hands, but to be the people's monitors, against the speakers of lies in hypocrisy, that they may be good ministers of Jesus Christ, 1 Timothy 4. 2, 6, 14. And to approve themselves, as the ministers of God, by the word of truth, and by the armor of righteousness, in the midst of afflictions and persecutions, 2 Cor 6. 4, 5, 7. Their administration, must from time to time keep up, what God would have kept up, both in his people's practice, and in doctrine, in worship, and devotion. They shall teach my people the difference, between the holy and profane; and shall cause them to discern, between the unclean and the clean. And they shall keep my laws, and my statutes, in all mine assemblies; or, see that all things be done in those assemblies, according to them, as Theodoret expounds it, Ezekiel 44: 23, 24. 041b061a72