 Yes, thank you. I am Matthew Millionium from Boston, father's of the way. Ken introduced the subject of fornication and adultery to me and asked me to speak on that subject and with the time limitations, I began to think about what's the best way, but what's the best use of that time? Because there are many many things we could talk about in in that one area of sexual morality. The thing that that occurred to me and the thing that I wanted to bring before all of you is that there is a route to the insanity that we see happening in the world around us. And if we look carefully at what's been happening in in America and in Western society, we can trace back where these problems come from. Today we're in a world where people do not know if they're men or women and we have seen the ultimate degradation of man. And when when I came into the kingdom, I was I was struggling with these teachings of Jesus that hadn't been taught to me in any other environment and very soon the things that people like me run across is the teachings about non-resistance and teachings about divorce and marriage. Because the things that by and large have been totally forsaken by most places that call themselves the church in America. So when when I began to look into that issue and look back through time and see how the church has responded to the issue of marriage especially. And we look back into early American history when when anybody who called themselves a Christian was against divorce from marriage. And we see how over time these things have become more and more acceptable. And I understood very early on that you can draw a direct line of causation between the church changing her stance and in allowing people to redefine God's definition of marriage. There's a straight line of causation from that decision among those who were calling themselves the church in America and all of the social ills that we're seeing in regards to family and sexual purity now today. It's directly tied to to problems in the home where we see children being raised with either single mothers or men that are not their fathers and their homes and the problems that come along with that. The single mother syndrome that you know where not only dad is missing but now mom is missing because she has to work children raised on their own and all the problems that come from that. We see we see women coming into the ministries of the church because we've redefined the roles of a man and a woman. We see people questioning if that's up for question. Who's my father. Who's my mother. Who's my brother. Who's my sister. And I don't know how involved some of you are with people. But it is it takes a long time to figure out people's families. When you start talking about step parents and step grandparents and step brothers and half brothers and half sisters. It's hard to tell who's even family anymore. And all of these problems go straight back to changing our simple definitions of that Jesus laid out that a man and a woman for life. Our husband and wife. So so I just want to lay out there that that all of the a lot of these social issues that we're dealing with go back to this one issue. And I think that it's the onus is on us to be presenting this to the world around us. There's a similar problem like Finney talked about this morning with this avoidance ethic. You know that it's a temptation to be enclaved and say we have we don't allow divorce or marriage without challenging the world around us. Because how many of you have had the same experience that I have where you meet someone they seem like the responsive they seem like they're open. You have a few you have some dialogue with them. Maybe you have a meal with them. And then you realize this is their second wife. And you kind of have this man and you almost give up. But see that's the problem. That's the problem. There is hope for these people. And I began to think about the sin of adultery, the sin of divorce or marriage. The sin that sin is no different than other sins. And when I meet a drunkard and I talk with him and he'll listen to me. I'm not afraid to say, Hey, listen, friend, if you keep doing this, you're going to end up in hell because this sin is separating you from God. But for some reason, because of the emotions tied to the situation, a lot of other things were really afraid to engage people on this issue and challenge people very upfront and from the beginning that this is a sin, just like drunkenness, just like any other sin. And it is separating you from God. It's putting your soul in peril. And we need to begin to present it to the world around us. You know, we've done pretty good. People understand that we're modest. People understand that we believe in head coverings. People understand that we're nonviolent. But there are all kinds of people in every evangelical church around your church that have no idea. There is a group of people who is teaching and believing the things that are very clearly taught in the scriptures about divorce or marriage. And we need to bring those up. The other problem that we have, we have in the church is that we have, we're not speaking with one mind about this issue. And this is where it gets really practical for us in this room. There, there's a division over this issue of divorce or marriage among us. So we have a very small group of people who are, we have a very small group of people who believe these teachings. But among those of us who do, this small percentage of people in America who teach that divorce or marriage is wrong, we have this problem that we don't see eye to eye on some particular facets of divorce or marriage and how to apply the church's teaching to these situations. And it comes from the complexities that have developed in a society that's abandoned God's ways. And here we find ourselves, the people of God, looking at the scriptures and saying, well, we have to have some way to deal with this. And so we reason together and we come up with positions that are not in the same camp. And I don't think it's tolerable. And I'll explain what I'm talking about for those of you that are not following. But I don't think it's tolerable that the few people who are preaching against divorce or marriage don't see things the same way. So I think we need to have conversations. And what's missing in that conversation, we shouldn't be content to allow each other to sit in our own camps. We need to engage with each other and begin to have really thoughtful and critical conversations about how we're going to minister to the tremendous needs of divorce or marriage in our day. When I present the gospel to people, when I talk about obeying Jesus and following the Son of the Mount, the number one thing that evangelicals or people in a nominal Christian setting say is that can't be true because it would affect so many people. And we've got to start reaching those people and we've got to start healing these people and we've got to start bringing them out of these simple situations into a place of purity. The church needs to be engaged in these people's lives and making ways for them to repent and walk in holiness and truth so that we can raise up a testimony. You know, we have brothers and sisters who are being faithful on this issue. They have hard lives. They've made hard choices just like Jesus said they would for the kingdom of God. They're very valuable. They're very precious. We need to be supporting them and loving them and encouraging them and lifting up their testimony to the world around us so that we can say, no, there are people who are obeying Jesus. Look here. Come and talk to them. Come and meet them. We have answers to these problems, but we have to get our heads together and be able to say the same thing. What's been missing in our conversation, quite frankly, is just a good terminology. So we have two issues. We have an issue that we have begun to call unconditional indissolubility. I know that's a big term. But what it means is that the view that we're familiar with that says there's only one marriage that exists and that there's only one marriage that God sanctions and anything else is not a marriage. It's just adultery and there are all kinds of implications from that. There's another side to this to this issue that we have begun to call consequential marriages that each time someone engages in a marriage, there are attendant consequences and their implications from all that. So to be able to use some terms and to define those terms and to begin to have conversations among ourselves about how to resolve these differences and what's the best the best way to apply the scriptures and how to help people in these situations. I think it's a really critical issue that we as a people need to take upon our hearts in order to start answering these problems. We have to be able to deal with who we have to all be able to speak with one mind about who is an adulterer? What is a marriage? These are really critical, you know, basic issues that that involve these these complicated cases. And I'm just encouraging all of us in this short time that I have to begin to pursue these conversations follows the ways is hopefully working on some putting out some literature and some papers about these things with the hope of engendering a conversation about this. So I'm out of time here and thank you for the opportunity to present that. First miracle. First miracle. All right, thank you, brother Matthew, you mentioned a term into soluble something. Could you say that again? Yes. Mike, please. Where's that Mike? So. So again, the terms that we begin to use and and we're open, you know, we're just for the purpose of having a conversation about these things. What happens oftentimes with me is I start a conversation with someone and I have to explain the whole premise before we can talk about it. And so these terms are kind of a way to have a shorthand expression and unconditional indissolubility. There is nothing that can dissolve the first marriage. There's no condition that can change the status of that marriage. Unconditional indissolubility. Both views have a kind of indissolubility, but this one is distinguished by unconditional. There's nothing that can affect it. And I think a lot of people in here are familiar with that line of argument. The other term that we've begun to apply is consequential marriages, that there is a consequence associated with every marriage. So if you marry a divorced person, that that that is a marriage, albeit it's it's an improper one that has to be repented of, but it was a marriage. So that's a thank you, brother. All right. So what would be your solution in terms of trying to bring people together on the last issue you're talking about here? Yes. Yeah. So I think it has to begin with conversation and it has to begin with open conversation. You know, a lot of us that think a lot about these things and talk about them have developed very well reasoned arguments for why we believe what we believe. And we need to have we need to so I recognize that some of my favorite brothers don't hold the same view as me on this. People that I love and admire and respect. I'm not content to have that difference, but that difference exists. So what I hope is that with some terminology and with some openness among us, we can begin to not allow ourselves to just sit in our camps, but engage with each other and find resolutions to these issues. Thank you, brother. I'm going to open it up to the rest of the panelists. If they have a comment or something to say about this issue of the unconditional indissolubility versus consequential marriage. Just taking the word adultery, the word adultery means to mix. And I've asked myself the question, what are we mixing? When someone commits adultery, what is it that they are mixing? And I've come to the conclusion of what they are mixing is covenants. When you're when you have made a covenant with one person, and now you make a covenant with another person, you are mixing or blending covenants. Now you've got two covenants, which you really cannot be faithful to either one of them. And so you have committed adultery. Therefore, you are an adulterer as long as you are in a state where you've made two covenants, you are an adulterer. So in your impression, marriage is based upon covenant. Yes, definitely. OK, now we didn't talk about this, Brother Donnie. And you did not understand Brother Matthew's position, but I'm understanding right at this moment that all five of us, I think, are on the same page on this particular issue. Thank you very much. OK, so, yeah, maybe at some point we ought to figure out how to get together and work on these issues as a larger body. All right, now I have a question for you, brother. You were saying you think that the one of the big causes of the immorality in society is rooted back in the failure of the church to maintain purity on the issue of adultery. What is the solution? If we're going to talk to the rest of the church world about the problem, what can we offer them? Yeah, so we have a lot to offer them. We have a lot to offer them with our families. We have a lot to offer them with pure marriages in the church, but that's not enough. I think the reason, actually, a big part of the reason of why we have allowed these two different camps to live in harmony in kingdom churches is because, by and large, we haven't been effective at bringing people in. And as the church brings these people in, then we have to deal with these practical implications of the state of these people. And it's not just a level of theory, but now we have somebody who's in the church who we're dealing with these situations and we have to begin to talk about what the case is and get counsel from people and find some kind of solutions for these complicated lives. Do you have any teachings of Jesus that you think of that might bear on this particular issue? Well, absolutely. They're on the issue in particular. Yeah, so we all know the classic texts that Jesus and the apostles teach about divorce and marriage. But I think in regards to the brother's statement about covenant, it's also very interesting to look at Joshua chapter nine and see how God's dealing with covenant in the Old Testament. And in that case, in particular, a covenant that wasn't supposed to be made that was made in a bad way and the implications of it. So yeah, these are all things that guide our thinking. I want to say one thing that I want to open it up to the rest of the panel. We have a brother, Tim, I hope you don't mind it. Maybe you'll share some more with us. Brother Tim here is on a journey, a very personal and a very painful journey with his own marriage. And in fellowship with these brothers at Boston, he has come to the place where he realizes that as Jesus taught here in Matthew 19, there are some units which were so born from their mother's womb. And there are some units which were made units of men and there will be some units which have made themselves units for the kingdom of heaven's sake. For the Matthew, would you say that is a solution we must offer to the churches if they want to purify their ranks? Absolutely it is. But here's the really neat thing about that. We've been really family focused for a long time. And I think we've lost the value. So if I meet somebody who's in one of these situations and because of their situation, they're like brother Tim, they're in a place where they have to remain single. That's not a curse. Amen. It's a blessing. It's an opportunity for the kingdom of God. And we need to present it as that. Amen. Like your repentance is an opportunity for you to live for God like nobody else can. Amen. To raise up a testimony and to live a consecrated life that can do things for God that a lot of us married brothers cannot do. Thank you brother. We have four minutes. So I'll open it up to the rest of the panelists. Yeah, Matthew. So practically, how does that look? So someone's married in an unbiblical marriage, they need to separate in order to be in a right standing with the Lord. How would you handle that situation practically? You know, this person doesn't want the woman doesn't have financial means. The husband is the main breadwinner. How do you deal with something like that on a practical level? So there's there's as many there's as many answers to that question as there are situations and we have to be able to analyze what's happening in this situation. What's happening in the home are both the are both the husband and wife willing to walk in holiness in this issue. Are we, you know, is is the mama wanting to repent? But the Papa doesn't, you know, all those issues change dramatically how that works out. But what I what I would say is that it's our job as the church to minister wherever we can and find support. You know, I've seen some tremendous blessings in my time at Ephrata in watching the church take care of single mothers, women who didn't have resources and opportunities on their own. That the church was able to step in and bless those women and allow them to take care of their children and take care of their home for whatever the situation of their life was. And it was a good, good experience. And I think we ought to be involved in that kind of work. OK, thank you, brother. Does anybody else have a comment on anything that's been said or another question for Brother Matthew? How many minutes we have three minutes, three minutes left. Here's sort of a question. We're dealing with a lot of people here that know these scriptures. Maybe there's differences of interpretation, but we know the scriptures at least. But we're living in a society that doesn't know the scriptures. How can we change that? How can we change it to get to the point where at least society is awakened to the fact that these verses are in the Bible? And I say that, you know, working with gospel signs, there's just, you know, you show people certain verses and they come up behind your car. They come up upon this sign saying, that's not in the Bible. Even though there's a reference underneath it, how can we change that? Yeah, it's a great question. I'll say by way of encouragement that one thing first, judgment must begin at the house of God. And there's a lot of people who call themselves Christians who are in divorce or married situations. And we encounter them all across the board in every denomination and every place. And I think that's a fertile ground to start because you're starting with someone who already does accept these scriptures. But outside of that context, I'll say within within the evangelical world, when people have come to us, especially Roger and I's time at Valley, when we encounter people who are coming into our church from some evangelical world, who are not familiar with this teaching, we had a lot of conversations with people where we had to, for the very first time, sit down with a man and a woman who are in one of these situations and challenge them and say, listen, we love you. We so much appreciate you and your family, but we have to share the truth with you. Let us open the pages of scripture and we would read through the teaching of Jesus, the teaching of the apostles, and we would challenge them and say, listen, it doesn't, we do love you and God loves you. And he said, this situation is not right and you have to repent. Every time I've had that conversation, it has resulted in conviction of the Holy Spirit that in every one of those occasions, when we've sat down and done that, the Holy Ghost convicts those people that what the situation therein is wrong. And not all of them have followed that conviction into repentance, but every conversation like that that I've had has resulted in conviction. And that's a strong testimony to me that God wants to work in this way and he wants to challenge people. And I think that even secular homes know if you talk to people who are divorced or married, they know, they know they had a reservation when they got married the second time or they'll say things like it's never like the first time or you never love like the first time. And those are opportunities that we have to capitalize on those sentiments and those feelings that are latent at the heart of every man and woman because this is the beautiful thing about marriage is that it's universal, right? We don't remarry people when they come in the church. It's the very first institution of human society and it's present in when the heathen gets married. He's showing a picture of our Jesus and our church everywhere on earth where people get married. They're testifying about Jesus and his bride. But I didn't think of doing this till right now. We have this brother, Brother Roger wrote this book, Dear Pastor, and it's addressed to the very people you were saying we should address. The pastors of the churches that have accepted divorce and remarriage. Brother Roger has some copies in the back and I'm sure while they last he would be glad to stand there and talk to you about the book, maybe even sign his name. So at this point, we're going to turn the time over to Brother Roger and he will make a statement about pornography, media, whatever the Lord has laid on your heart, Brother. All right. Well, good afternoon. You know, these things that we're talking about are not easy in a mixed group like this, this thing of pornography and in with it. Of course, we have to think about the sin of self abuse, masturbation. You know, these things go together, but I'm convinced we have to bring these things to light. If we don't, if we leave them in darkness, we're going to be in snare. That's what's that's what's been happening all around us with the title of this is called lifting up a standard. And when we talk about lifting up a standard, one of the first things that comes in my mind is this billboard that Christian aid ministry has been putting up lust drags you down to hell. We had one of these boards in Missouri and a man I'm going to call Adam was driving through Missouri on June 17 of this year. He passed this billboard and it immediately grabbed his attention. He's Adam is married to a woman we'll call Betty. This is the first marriage for both of them. They're churchgoing people at one point. They had a genuine walk with God. But six months ago, Adam's wife had an affair and she came and confessed it or else she was caught. But it really jeopardized their marriage. They were going to divorce. They decided somehow let's stay together and let's try to work it out. But two days before he drove past this billboard, Adam caught his wife again in an affair again with the same man. He called the billboard. He says he thinks he says he says, you know, this is obviously jeopardizing our marriage. He says, but I have something to confess. He thinks he says, I believe it's not just my wife who has a problem with lust. He says, I think I do too. He says, I have something to confess that no one else knows about. My wife doesn't know about it. My pastors don't know about it. Nobody else knows about it. But me, I have been into pornography since childhood. This pornography has affected his mind as it always does. He became emotionally abusive to his wife, put her down a lot. And that was part of what drove her to the affair. But she didn't have any idea that this was what was going on. I encouraged him to go home and confess it to his wife and confess it to other believers. Bring it to the light. Deal with it, this thing of pornography. The end of that conversation, he said, I'm home now. I'm parked in the driveway. I need to go inside and I'm going to confess this to my wife. A few weeks later, we sent them some videos from John Koblence about marriage counseling videos. He sent me a text. He said that they received them. They got these videos. They're going to watch them together. He said, I've also been reading a book called Every Man's Battle. And he said, that's a book on sexual purity. And he says, I feel truly blessed and free from sin. So there is hope. There is a possibility of redemption, even if you're wrapped up in this. What's the definition of porn? It's that which is designed to excite sexual desires. That's what it's about. So of course, it would include anything you get from the adult store, magazines, videos, things you download on the internet under that title. But I'm convinced it's more than that. I'm convinced much of the advertising content we see today has the same intent behind it. Therefore, it's also pornography. Many of the novels you can buy today, including this recent bestseller, 50 Shades of Grey, they call it. And it hit the bestseller list. But it's definitely pornography. And it's what is bringing people into this addiction. Let's talk about some statistics. 90% of boys today are exposed to pornography by the time they're age 18. The average age is 11. That's the average age of first exposure. Also, men are five times as likely to want to look at porn than women are, even though many women are also ensnared in it. Here's some shocking news. 50% of Christian men admit that they are addicted to pornography. 50% of not just out there men, but Christian men. People who say they're Christians, I should say. And pastors, there was a poll taken of pastors and 30% admitted that they had viewed internet pornography within the last 30 days. Well, that's out there. What about here in a group this size? I wonder what you would think if I would ask those of you who have fallen to one of these sins, self-abuse or pornography within the last 30 days. Everybody be totally honest and stand. Would you be shocked? Now, please don't do it. But would you be shocked if you saw five people stand up in here? Would you be shocked if you saw 50 people stand up in a group this size? I don't know how many are here. But I'm guessing that a lot of us would be shocked. Probably the women would be more shocked than the men. But I'd like to talk to you if you are sitting here. Just after I said that, something went through your mind. You say, you know what? If I was honest, I would have to be the one. And you're sitting there hoping I don't ask. Well, I'm not going to ask, but I want to talk to you for a moment. I want to say to this. I want to say this to you. Don't despair. Because just imagine with me a moment that I would ask another question. I would say everybody stand if you have at one point been addicted to pornography and God set you free. And you have been free for a period of time. Let's say 12 months and you haven't touched it since then. I think you would say, I'm not asking that, but if I would, just imagine with me that you'd see people all over this tabernacle stand up. I believe that would be the case, by the way. I believe we'd have a whole host of people right here in this building that would stand up. That should be an encouragement to you. If God can do it for them, He can do it for you. If God can set them free, He can do it to the rest as well. We can talk about pornography in this way. We can say it's just simply dirty filth. You know, we can talk about how black and dark it is. Here's a problem though. The people who are in it, at least they're just getting in it. They don't think of it that way. To them, it's a source of pleasure. It's a source of excitement. It's a relief from their troubles. And so to paint a picture as it's all black and filth, there's something that doesn't, it doesn't click that way. Which makes it even more important that we do paint it for what it really is. It really is dark and the devil uses that sweet taste to pull more and more people into it. And it is poison. It will kill you. And the desires are never satisfied. They only increase. And they go deeper and darker and into things, places you never thought you should go. So is there a victory? Is there a secret? What is a secret to victory? You know, many people have found different secrets to victory. Let me tell you one thing that is not a secret that many people think is a secret. That's marriage. A lot of people think I'm addicted to porn now, but as soon as I get married, I'm going to be free. Many testimonies tell us it's not the case. They carry it right over into marriage. And it's not the magic pill that they thought it was going to be. So what is the secret? Let me mention a few things that for many people have been the final key to get this. And I would encourage all of these things because they're all powerful. Number one, prayer and fasting. For many, that's been the key to victory. Number two, filling your mind with the word of God, scripture memorization. For other people, they examined their condition before God and they realized they had not ever truly surrendered to Jesus, never been truly born again. So that thing of true surrender was the key that set them free. Another thing is accountability, bringing it before the light. Many people have struggled. They did everything they needed new to do, but they could never get victory until they brought it into the light and exposed it, let their friends, their wife, their pastor, someone see this dark side of their secret life. But the last one is one I want to emphasize. It's the fear of God. Testimony of a friend of mine who had this addiction. He grew up in a church that told him he could never, once he's truly born again, he could never lose his salvation. And he believed it. But he had this addiction, carried it over into marriage. One day he was reading in Hebrews 10, 26, which says, if we sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there's no more sacrifice for sin. But only a fearful expectation of judgment and raging fire. When he read that verse, the fear of God came over him. And he did get born again. And he also put this habit away permanently. If you're a father here with young children, if you're a pastor, I encourage you open up this subject. The devil has his way when we don't talk about it. If we warn people, and if we tell people that there is a danger here, especially if you can catch them at a young age before they take the first bite, how powerful it is, how much more freedom they're going to experience in the future. If they take that first bite of either of these sins, they're going to struggle probably more than anybody else. But if they can avoid that, then if you can do it as a pastor or a father, I encourage you to sound the warning and have them do it. And my own testimony is I'm so thankful for a conversation I had with my father that saved me a tremendous amount of grief. So thank you. Thank you for being willing to think about these things. God bless you. Thank you so much, dear brother, for bearing your heart and being frank about this. I wasn't asked to do this. This was a struggle of mine for quite a few years. Accidental exposure at six years old. I struggled with it for off and on for 20 some years. I praise God and I have to do this like a recovering drunk with AA or something. I have to keep talking about my story. But by God's grace and His mercy and with the help of other brothers, I've been free for over 20 years. I praise God. So I say that to raise up a standard, say that it is possible as addictive and as destructive as this stuff is. It is possible that a man like myself can be set free. And I want to lift up the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ all glory to Him, nothing to myself. If I was where I deserve to be, you know where I'd be. All right. The question still is practically speaking. How do you help people in the church? I will mention this one thing too. We've been open with this at home and you were talking about the statistics. How prevalent is it among our churches? I'll be frank with you. In the brothers meeting, we did a snap survey and discovered that about 25% of our brothers had been somehow struggling with it within the last several months. That's with a conservative Anabaptist church. I'm ashamed to say that. That's reality. However, we are trying to address the problem, but it is a widely prevalent problem. If there's any pastors here, I would encourage you to somehow get a pulse on your congregation and at least bring some reality to the extent of the problem. Let it bring us to our knees. Okay. Are there questions for Brother Roger on the question of how to help? Or any comments? There has been some people are saying that to break an addiction like that requires a reprogramming of the mind and that it takes from 30 to 50 days to reprogram the mind to heal neurological pathways and to create new ones. What do you feel about that? Is there any validity to that and helping people to work through that? Have you found that to be true? I believe there is a lot of validity to that, but that is from a scientific standpoint, not a spiritual standpoint. We have that study that we can look at, and I was just reading some of those things this morning, I would have loved to read the whole article to you. Those certain number of days, I was thinking 50 days, something like that. But yeah, to reprogram, there's a term used to reject and replace, I think. And again, this is any addiction, this is from a secular standpoint. This was studies of the brain. So we can know that, but we have an additional resource. That's the blessing of being followers of Jesus. We can tap into a power that supersedes that 50-day rule or whatever it is. Amen. And so, yeah, we can't ignore it if it's true science, which I have no reason to doubt it, but we can take that in addition and say, hey, the power of the gospel has something in addition to add to that. Yeah. So I have four sons now. My oldest son just turned 13. Can you talk some about when and how we should be talking to our sons because I think they're the primary target of these attacks of the enemy? When my father spoke to me about this, one of the most powerful conversations we had, I'm sure it wasn't an easy conversation for him. It wasn't like we had an extremely close relationship, but somehow he knew he had a responsibility to do it and I've been forever grateful that he did. How old was I? I don't know, I would guess 10, 11, sometime in there, which means, brother Ken, if I would have been in your shoes, he would have missed his opportunity. That's scary. And it's more scary now than when you and I were young. Yes, that's right. It's all around us. It's on our phones. It's on everything. I'm not sure what to say. I have a question for you, brothers. I'm speaking now from my own experience, but my burden is the protection of innocence because this is what happened to me and it just absolutely changed my life. When I discovered that and I fed on it, I struggled with this thing for 20 years and one of the burdens of my heart, and I know we don't want to retreat into this isolationist ironclad kind of set, but Sodom has come to us and we are responsible. I tell my congregation we got to cut off our right hand. Now, this is going to be controversial, no doubt, but I'm going to, if I can find it, I just pulled out my good old flip phone and this flip phone has got the internet turned off on it because I don't trust myself and I don't trust my boys to carry something around in their pockets. They can pull out at any moment and in a moment of weakness, indulge. Any other comments? Let me ask you, brother, with an early experience like that and I had an early experience similarly, how and when, this is the question that I keep coming back to with my sons and I think a lot of fathers struggle with it. We don't want to bring up curiosity and invite problems in our young sons, but we don't dare wait too late. So how are we dealing with introducing ideas of purity and teachings about purity and warnings about purity in our young boys? Again, maybe some of you, brother Donnie, you've got older sons than I do. Really? Yeah, I do have older sons than you do, but I guess our way of dealing with it was to avoid it. We do not have smart phones and we don't have internet in our home or business, although both of my boys would have, now that they're older and more mature, they are using internet and they're using, obviously they have blocks on it and filters and things like that, but this is a problem that we encounter everywhere we go because we're being almost forced into using the internet. If we need to use it, we have a laptop, we can go to a Wi-Fi someplace and use it. But yeah, it's a universal problem and sometimes I think about the Amish. They've chosen to not have telephones, they've chosen to refuse technology because of how it's going to impact their lifestyles and I think there's a place for us to make those same choices in some of this technology that's coming down the street. Thank you very much, brother. And in our home, I like the idea of simply not having a Wi-Fi in the home, but if you need to go somewhere, take your laptop if you have to do that. I'm going to think hard about that. Okay. And any other comments? I would say in our home, we do have Wi-Fi, but it's through a router that does have a blocker on it. So anybody going through that router, it would at least slow them down. Somebody who's tech savvy can always get around it and that's why I... Yeah, I'm certainly not an expert on this. I would say that the last point of the fear of God, if that's not there, there's really no stopping anyone. In the same article, it was actually a Michael Pearl article, which I have a lot of disagreements with him on various things, but in this issue of pornography, it was actually pretty well done. He had a letter in there from a family who had moved to a very conservative setting to try to guard their children, and somehow their 10-year-old son was exposed to a phone or something. He developed this craving for it. He rode his bike 10 miles to get it. He got it and it was just a very sad story. People who were trying to protect and the devil still got through, and somehow, yeah, it's scary. That's all I can say. Yeah, so one thing we've done in Boston is really trying to at least once a month to have an accountability group, and those times have been great. I think we could do it more often and maybe even do one-on-one type of accountability, but how do you propose going from potentially a place where there's a lot of hidden sin in such a shameful area, right? The sexual sins are the most shameful of areas because you sin against your whole body and you feel real guilty and you don't want to talk about it, but how do you propose starting that for any of the people here? How do you start such a sensitive issue? Do you have any thoughts on that or what? Good question. A big question. We have about 60 seconds, according to the timetable, but go ahead, Brother Roger. That's a good question. In other words, you're saying, what if there are 50 people here and they want to repent? I guess an altar call and they all repent together. I don't know. I'm not sure the answer to that. But the other alternative is to come to another brother individually, you know, and that would take... That's why it would be kind of nice to know how many are like yourself have said, I've been there, but God has set me free. And so the people who need freedom say, I'm going to go seek that brother out. That would be an interesting exercise. I'll leave it up to the moderators. One thing that we could potentially do here if you want to take the risk to do it, we could do an anonymous survey like we did at our church later at the next session. We could have... Should we do that? We could have papers available for people to fill out, whether or not they have had victory in the last three years, particularly three months or so, particularly for the men. It would give us an assessment of where we really are as God's people. How many of you brothers are in favor of doing that? Okay, we'll do it. And we want... We do not want to accept as inevitable brothers that 90% of our boys are going to be exposed to this by age 18. I refuse to accept that as inevitable. But that means we fathers, we have to take very strong measures to protect our homes. And it's terribly heartbreaking to me. I've tried very hard for 26 years to guard what comes into our homes through the mail. But now I have allowed Wi-Fi and we use Covenant Eyes, but I'm still very concerned and there's always smartphones that somebody can give to your son or something, and it's available everywhere. But we are not going to succumb to this inevitability, brothers and sisters. I think a lot of this solution rests on the fathers, first of all, for them to get their own hearts pure. And if there are fathers who aren't pure, then the first thing we should do by the grace of God is to expose that impurity before God and with a brother, preferably a pastor, and be responsible to your spiritual authority with this problem. Fathers got to get their act together if they haven't. And then I'll just say what we have done. I've sought to do this with my boys at a very young age, five, six years old or something, even earlier. And I've made them promise to me that if they find some immoral literature, whether it's in the ditch or they see something on the computer or anywhere, they come to me and we'll talk about it so that we can keep the conscience free and keep the accountability there. We have to live with a new level of transparency, brothers and sisters. And I'm convinced that if I am unable to, if I am unwilling to expose my internet usage in its totality to anyone, then maybe I'm not transparent enough in this day and age. I think we should transparency, a complete freedom to share where our travels have taken us on the internet is part of this solution. I've taken away time from you, brothers, and we're over time now, but that's okay. Anything else on this very important subject? I hope we've said something that has encouraged. We don't want to leave with a sense of hopelessness. There is hope in Jesus and if we walk in the light with him and with our brothers and with our fathers and mothers. Okay, well, I'm not sure if I'll ever be asked to speak again at these type of events, but as Ken said, that we need a new level of vulnerability. So I'm going to read to you a passage in Nehemiah chapter 4 and verse 14 as the burdened Israelites were rebuilding the wall. And I believe today we are in desperate need of men to rise up and help us rebuild the wall that has been broken down by nominal Christians. And if ourselves fall into that camp, it said, And I looked and rose up and set unto the nobles and to the rulers and to the rest of the people. Be not ye afraid of them. Remember the Lord which is great and terrible and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses. Everything we're talking about today is this is the motivation. We're fighting for our Lord Jesus, but we're fighting for our brothers, our sisters, our sons and our daughters. My topic is raising a banner against homosexuality. I want to start off right from the get-go and make it unequivocally clear that the Bible is very clear. Homosexuality is a perversion. It is not right. It has no place in the kingdom of God. With that being said, I'm not going to sit here on a soapbox for the next eight minutes and tell you how evil it is. As we know it's evil, I'm going to talk a little bit about it. My main approach is going to be twofold. One, it is out of concern for our sons and our own family in the church here. I want to raise awareness so we can not be naive about this sin. Secondly, about the people, the unchurched or nominal Christians out there that are wrestling with this issue and how to help them. There's a lot here, so I'm going to talk fast. You can listen to the recording if there's one, and I'm happy to talk to you afterwards. I had my first exposure to pornography at five years old. One of my neighbors brought me downstairs into his house and showed me images of pornographic images. I didn't understand what they were, but I knew there was a lot of shame involved. Then at six years old I had a friend sleep over my house. He was a boy, and he introduced me to homosexual acts at six years old. Around the same time, my cousin also did the same thing. For the next years until I was 15 years old, I had participated in homosexual acts. I will tell you that like Ken, with being exposed to pornography, it had a wild, horrible effect on my psyche. On who I was as a person, on my security, around my friends. I was a very confident young man. I was very popular. I had lots of friends, and I was very active in sports, but underlying every day of my life, up until 19 when I met Jesus, I was wondering if I was actually gay or not. I questioned that all the time. Some people have an attraction to same-sex people. I didn't have that. I was never attracted to men per se. I never had that problem, if you will, or that challenge, but I had the perversion of the act in my mind, and I thought about it, and I thought through some of these things. It made me wonder if maybe, because the world teaches you that you're a certain way. Doesn't the world tell you that you're this way or you're that way? I also questioned whether or not I was that. I wrestled with this off and on. I think that many people today, studies prove it, 78% of all professing homosexuals were abused at some point before they were 18 years old. That's from men. Women are around 40%. They're less than men. There is some kind of abuse situation that takes place. And then, like anything we do in life, over time you might start off starting a business, and you might start being a roofer, and you start off doing some roofing work, and after a year you've got the car-hard pants, and you've got the tools, and after five years you've got the truck, and you've got the big building, and before you know it, you're fully full-on, you're a roofer. That's what you are. And it's the same thing with sin. It starts off with some incest or something taking place, and you don't even think about it much, but then as the world is so perverted, they get in there with you, and as you get older, all it would have taken for me, at 17 years old, off at art school, it would have just taken some rich man patron to take me under his wing and fund me for a bunch of my paintings, and encourage me to go down that homosexual road, and through the grace of God, that never happened. But that's typically how it happens. And then these people become a homosexual, and they feel like they're now fighting in this fraternity of other men that wrestle with this, or women, and then if you tell them, no, you're not a homosexual, they think they're a martyr for telling you that they are. And that's why we have this huge battle today. We're even in the church. We feel like we can't even say that, no, homosexual is wrong, because you're gonna get put out from the church or the school or the government for standing up against this. So, how do we deal with this issue? How do we raise a standard against this issue? I'm gonna tell you, there's only one solution. And it's not a recovery group, it's not a 12-step program, and it is nothing but the blood of Jesus. That might sound like a cliche, brothers and sisters, that may sound like a cliche, but when I was 19 years old and folks started studying the Word of God with me, and I was in this identity crisis, which I believe the world is in, an identity crisis right now, once I started to align my identity with Christ, it wasn't until then that I was freed from this sin. And I've been freed ever since from the insecurity of whether or not I was that way. I've now been restored back to who God made me, and I know I'm a man of God, and that's it. Now, I will say this, I'm gonna be very real with everybody here. 13 years ago I got married, and in that time I've messed up my marriage, as Ken said, we're no longer together right now, and be praying for us, maybe someday hopefully we'll get restored together. But much of the perversion that I had in my mind, even though I didn't act anything out in that same-sex type arena, it absolutely damaged my ability to handle my wife, to support her, to take care of her, to love her, to nurture her, and much of this perversion led to, someone was talking about breaking these addiction cycles, is what happens with sin, is that you get dopamine gets released from your brain, and it's basically a drug, and God allows that. Sex between a woman and a husband and a wife is one of the most amazing things in the world, and we should have no shame talking about that within the right context. Satan and his demons have taken that and perverted it, and they've used those same triggers, those same dopamine, those same pleasure centers, but they've moved it into sin. And so when you experience these sins, it gives you that drug-type euphoria. So whenever you're going through stressful times, or financial hardships, or even marital challenges, which some of you may have faced in your life, and the burdens of your children, and all the things that come up, if you've got this background, that you all do, and maybe some folks here too, your natural inclination is to want to revert back to those places where you get those pleasures from. That's why we have to be vigilant when we're taking in folks from the world, or from the nominal churches that are really wrestling with this, and dare I say these folks here too, we've got to be very aware of how the devil roams around like a roaring lion, and not put this stuff under the rug. Don't ever let the words come out of your mouth that that would never happen in my house, that my son would never do that. That is naive. We need to put that type of thinking to death. We need to, like Ken said, bring up these issues. I am being purposely very vulnerable with you guys today, because I want to make sure you know these issues are real. And the only way we're going to accomplish and overcome this is we can have victories in the church. It starts with the church, judgment does too. And then as we bring in outsiders, as we raise our family, we can have more and more victory. And I believe, like I was, I'm one of the most, and probably still am one of the most grateful Christians, all the glory to God, because of the fact that I've been rescued from this bondage, and it's nothing but the blood of Jesus. So to that, second miracle. So brother Tim, once again, we come to this question. What is the solution? I meet somebody, and they're struggling. I'm trying to help somebody as a pastor. How do they overcome? So it's a great question, and it's not complicated. The world wants to make it complicated, and they want to make this issue unbearable, and there's no way out. So I'm not one to go looking. I'm not going to go to the gay pride parade and look to win over those people. However, God puts people in my life on a regular basis, and I build friendships with them. And I have clients that are of the homosexual lifestyle, persuasion. Just like someone working out of McDonald's would serve a lesbian couple, I have couples that I work with, and I minister to them just like I would any one of you all. So the answer is, first of all, again to sound cliche, the answer is love. Love one another as I have loved you. That is the answer. You are not going to save anybody by telling them they're going to hell for being a homosexual. As I just shared my story, if anyone ever said that to me at 19, I can promise you I would not be sitting here right now, because I would have been so turned off by that way of thinking until I knew the Bible. The second thing is, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. We've heard that before. So once people know how much you care, they start to really open up their lives. I think about Russell, he was a homeless, sexual man, 18 years old, living in the streets of Boston, in a halfway house. I shared my faith with him on the streets of Boston, walking up an escalator. He was going down, I was going up, and I said, hey, you look like you want to know Jesus. And he said, I do. And he was going down the escalator. So I went down and chased them. We exchanged numbers. The halfway house, I reached out to him. We studied the Bible over a six-month period. He got baptized. I didn't change him through my humor and my wit. It was through opening up the Word of God, showing him John 8, 31, 32, that if you hold to my teachings, you'll really know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Did you have something about the Matthew? Yeah, I did. Praise God. Our churches are one of the last bastions of real masculinity and real femininity. I rejoiced that. And men are men in my church and women are women. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I shouldn't even have to say that, but we live in a world where you have to say that now. In that context... Brother Matthew, if I can just interrupt, you're a good example. I'm doing my part. I'm trying. So coming from that context, you know, it's very easy to look at these things in the world, the things in the newspaper, the things that we encounter, in Boston where we live, and it's rampant. It is so easy, brother and sisters, to take an isolationist approach to these things, or at least an adversarial approach to these things. So I had an experience several months ago at the beginning of the summer. A guy called me, a brother of my church and I, we have a handyman business together. A guy called me and said he's moving into town. He's not from here and needed help. He's from the United States, and he's been doing these things. And it was obvious soon on that this man was a homosexual. And I have all these reactions. This is the enemy. This is the problem. That's what happens in my heart. This is what's destroying society. This is the problem in my day. And as I'm around this guy, I'm there for work. I'm just helping him with his house. We start to engage in a conversation. We get a meal together because it was late at night. And I was able to talk to him and ask him about his life. Ask him about where he's from. And to experience homosexuals as people, as men and women with hurts and with all the things to dehumanize the homosexuals is the number one problem that we have in ministry. How do you overcome that yuck factor? Well, I think it's through the opportunities to engage with people as people. The way that the military teaches young men to kill is by dehumanizing the enemy. He doesn't think like you. He doesn't love his mama like you love your mama. He doesn't love his children like you love your children. That guy is an other. He's not really a man. He doesn't feel the way you do. And I think that we have a temptation to do the same things because these sins are very, very scary. And we're seeing the damage that we're doing in our society. And to rehumanize the people that are involved in the struggles and to have individual encounters with people that can be loving and generous and kind I think is a big part of it. Thank you, dear brother. Did you have something more on that? I was gonna say, you know, one of the best ways to practically other than just getting into the Bible because not everyone's ready to sit down and study the Bible. But showing men what men do. Going out hiking, going out doing things together, men want to be men. We were designed to be men. Even if you're somewhat of a feminized man, they want to be men. They long for those manly relationships. And because of the industrial revolution, the men stopped taking their boys to work with them all day and they went off the farm into the city. And then we had World War I and II and all the men went off to war which made great CEOs and great leaders but didn't translate to raising good boys from there. They were being raised by women or nannies so really we have a feminized man problem. A lack of masculinity today which is lending itself very naturally to the homosexual persuasion. So if we can show them with our lives another way, like Matthew said, anyone that comes into our fellowship we got a guy right now who's a six foot four semi pro baseball player he is begging, he wished he could have been here this weekend but he's got a final playoff game but he loves hanging out with us because we're all a bunch of men that stay up and drink coffee and talk about God. I mean where else are you getting that? I mean forget you don't have to have the coffee part but he loves hanging out with us. How do you answer this question? I was born that way. Sure. So it's a great question and here's the thing I'm going to say this and some might disagree but you show me your success. I believe it's misguided energy if you're going to fight that battle because whether or not you were born with a same sex attraction or whether you weren't and it just developed whether it was nature or nurture, I don't know. Literally 50% of the scientific studies say that you were 50% say you weren't. Animals act homosexual sometimes. Well we're not animals. I think you have to say listen you may have been born with some tendencies. I was born wanting to talk a lot but that doesn't mean I have to and you get into it that way. I understand. Thank you very much. Another question for any of one of you. So now this compromise has entered the churches. How do you talk to someone in a church who believes this is somehow now okay? We have about two and a half, three minutes. How do you answer the compromise in the churches? Go ahead Tim. Well I'm going to be honest and say I don't fully know. I think what is it Mennonite today recently had that big article with the former elder that's now grandson or son was a homosexual and I mean you should have seen the message board on that about half the people saying thanks for taking the stand and saying this is okay the other half saying you guys are all a bunch of hypocrites and heretics. I think like in a lot of areas people have lost their way with theology and true biblical Christianity and discipleship. I think when you start getting into the scriptures and you don't have to go past Genesis the first book in the Bible to talk about that in the beginning God made man and made woman to compliment that it's not okay. By the way did Jesus teach that a homosexual can change? I mean I think he teaches that everyone can change. He said he was in Cernium and all those places and he said if the mighty works which had been done in Sodom and these mighty works had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah he said the judgment of God would have never come which means those people would have changed. Absolutely. I think everyone can repent and the people that God puts in your life are going to be there for you to build a relationship so they can get real, get open. Last thing I'm going to say about this guys this is a demonic problem. This is not a physical problem. This is not a psychological problem. This is a demonic problem and unless you tack it with spirituality with the Bible you will not win this war. This is beyond our winning. Did the Apostle Paul teach that homosexuals could change? He said no you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Don't be deceived neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind. Thieves, covetous drunkards, revilers, extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. Very clear. And such were praise God and such were some of you. So we have Jesus teaching that can be changed. We have Paul teaching that they can change. What else do we need brothers and sisters? I have one other book I'm going to recommend. Have you seen this book by Joe Dallas? I've read through it pretty much. I think he's sound all the way through. Do you know this man? I haven't read it. There's another brother that wrote a book that has more ministry type purposes. We can get that. What's his name? It's John Oblank off the top of my head. Gallinger? Steve Gallinger? He's actually a church of Christ guy and it's Guy Hammons. Go ahead while he's looking. One more thing about that. These are expensive things for the church to believe in. If we're going to hold a standard on divorce or marriage, we're going to pay a price in society. But we are preparing to pay no greater price than over this issue. As the world continues to change in this regard with gender confusion and with the rise of homosexuality in our day and age, we are going to begin to be persecuted over this issue. And we are going to begin to be sued and our businesses are going to be affected and our pocket books and eventually perhaps our personal freedom. And so I'm just it's worth since we're talking about the issue to bring it before God's people that this is something we have to be serious about because the world is going off the rails with it. That's right. That's right. Brother Donny, did you have something? Can I have just a minute? Yes. We've been talking a lot about male homosexuality here and I would just like to make a comment about lesbianism. Last summer, within a two week my wife received three phone calls from three anti-baptist pastors' wives asking the same question, how do we help young girls who are being attracted into home or lesbian relationships and we were just kind of aghast like what is going on in our anti-baptist communities that this is happening. And I just want to share what we've seen happening. I was born in the 50s so I remember I can think back 50 years and I just want to mention a little bit about the trend that led our nation to where it is now. Back in the 60s we had what was called the cultural revolution where young people decided that they're tired of the way, the moral standards that their parents were maintaining and so they threw it all to the wind and we had free love and immorality became socially acceptable. And then in the 70s we had the rise of feminism and then that led in the 80s and 90s to where homosexuality came out of the closet and became publicly recognized and actually accepted and they tried to gain acceptability and just looking at the trend that we saw there, what I believe is happening is that when men fail to defend the virtue of women and femininity, when they fail to defend the virtue of women women come to despise men, feminism which leads to the sexes now at war with each other which opens the door for homosexuality and what I'm afraid is what we're happening is we're seeing that very trend in our churches now 25% of our men struggling with pornography how can women respect, submit to those kinds of issues in their life and I think it's a call to us as men to rise up, to raise up a standard of moral integrity we're going to be men, we're not going to bow to the altar of sexual idolatry if we want our women to be strong then we need to be strong Can I say one last thing Ken? I just want to last thing I want to say if anyone is wrestling with these issues I just beg you get open with someone the biggest thing I want to make a point of today is don't let Satan keep you in bondage to this issue you haven't done the unpardonable sin and no one has ever gone to hell for confessing their sins so get open, get real, get help otherwise it's going to just spiral downwards to full blown death Praise the Lord the gospel leaves us with a solution to these problems and be as those who have no hope a few verses from Romans chapter 13 and that knowing the time that now it is high time to wake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed the night is far spent the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light let us walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambering and wantonness not in strife and envy but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh the assignment that I've been given is that of sexual molestation and incest and you may be thinking well that's certainly not an issue in our churches but I am sorry to inform you that it is unfortunately many many times our response to this issue is to shove it under the carpet cover it up we want to maintain our self-righteous appearance of purity and so we have a tendency to not bring these to the light but there are some cases that do come to the light and those are the ones that we have the most hope for and then also one of the things that my wife and I had discovered is that whenever you're counseling people who are struggling in their marriage many many times in helping them to work through the issues in their marriage the truth finally comes out I was molested as a child and many times that is some of the cause of the problems that they're having in their marriages first of all let's talk about the effect of sexual abuse it is murder in that it destroys a life you've probably seen young girls who have lost their glow the life has gone out of them there's theft in that it takes away that which can never be recovered or restored I should say virginity you're given one chance to be a virgin once you've lost it you have lost it fortunately you can be redeemed it is violence in that it assaults the spirit of a person and so sexual abuse is very very damaging it leaves the victim feeling broken and defiled many young girls who have been sexually abused feel like ruined goods like how can anyone ever love me and that is certainly tragic it destroys their sense of personal worth they struggle all their life some of them with these feelings that I'm not worth anything I can't do anything right I'm just a nobody it leaves them with false guilt many girls especially that have been sexually abused are confused about am I responsible for what happened or am I not and many times they go through life with this guilt about what happened and not sure what to do with that one person that my wife counsel said it this way in her attempt to deal with this guilt that she lives with she said that I had to come to the point where I repented of I had to repent of the pleasure that I received from the experience even though it was something that was forced upon her and was not something that she wanted she had to repent of any pleasure that she experienced in that process it twists the perception of sexual intimacy because now sexual intimacy has guilt associated with it and so they have a twisted perspective of sexual intimacy and maybe even disgust it damages the spirit of the marriage for the perpetrator as well in counseling one marriage who I was counseling a husband who was frustrated that his wife was not responding as he thought she should and I did not realize it at the time but I found out later that he had molested his sister and his wife knew about that so how could she respond she was not the first woman that he had been with and it damaged the spirit of their marriage it creates an illicit bonding that is not easily erased a girl tends to bond with the person who takes away her virginity even if it is in an illicit sense there's still a bond that happens there and that bond in the case of abuse is very very painful some symptoms to watch for for sexual abuse because most people who have been abused unless you have a very good relationship with them they're not going to come running up to you and say I've been sexually abused it is extremely shameful watch for sudden change in personality or behavior unreasonable outbursts of anger rebellion toward the parent in sharing some girls feel angry at their parents because you did not protect me and you're supposed to be my protector and you did not protect me look for antisocial behavior they become withdrawn depression they lose their song crying for no apparent reason and ungrounded fears irrational behavior some of these things may be evidence maybe signs that sexual abuse is happening as a parent we need to be aware of that we need to be tuned in to the spirit of our children the prevention of sexual abuse the most important thing is the spiritual climate of your home is your home truly a godly home do you pray regularly and faithfully for your children Job we read prayed for his sons and daughters and he offered sacrifices for them he said less they had sinned and less they have sinned in their hearts Job's concern for them was yes that they are living uprightly but he was also concerned about what was going on in the hearts of his children and Job prayed ahead about his children less they have sinned in their hearts something that was not outwardly visible or apparent but he was praying for them that their hearts would be kept pure and we need to be praying for our sons and daughters that their hearts would be kept pure yes we are concerned about their behavior but we need to also be concerned about their hearts and along with that we need to know the hearts of our children we need to have the kind of relationship with our children that they can come to us to talk about anything and everything that happens and like I said sometimes we want our family to look good and we want our children to behave right so the other people will think that we have our act together and we are a truly godly family we need to repent of our pride and we need to be willing to acknowledge if there's problems in our homes we need to be willing to acknowledge that and we need to be humble enough that our children can come to us and confess sin and we don't react because you're not supposed to do that because we're trying to defend our family name but rather we respond in a way that we can lead them to genuine repentance and healing in their lives we need to have that kind of a relationship with our children and we've been talking about how soon do we that thing's going up okay I got it we need to be we need to be sharing with them in such a way that there is this openness we need to be willing to talk to our children and I believe very early on we were hearing ages of 5 and 6 years old becoming defiled very very early on we need to tell our children that there are certain parts of your body that are strictly private and that no one should ever touch those parts of your body and you can do that at a very very young age and your child will understand because there is a built in sense of shame and your child will understand that tell them to report to you if anyone ever tries to touch them inappropriately open that up talk to your children so much sexual abuse and so much illicit sex happens because parents are turn it back and I think it is especially important in our day that we as parents be opening the door take the first step open the door to talk to our children about sexual matters the world is talking if we don't talk they are going to get their information from where it is available as parents we need to be able to share with them and many times if there is issues in our own life if we have our own spiritual bondages that makes it very very difficult to open up and talk to your children about sex and many times that is what is going on parents themselves have issues that are unresolved and so it is very very difficult for them to open up and share we need to create an environment of openness where we can share with them and they can share with us he says I am out of time already I am going to over run a little bit response to sexual abuse what is the right response if you find out that abuse is happening in your home the worst thing you can do is cover it up you need to open up you need to actually in Pennsylvania the laws require that you report out before you report up that means you need to report to the child protection agency that may sound threatening because the world does not have answers to these problems we shared with a family this past weekend who had this situation in their home and they immediately separated the perpetrator from the victim which was the right thing to do they got help from the perpetrator someone reported it to the child protection agency the child protection agency came in and evaluated what had happened and the child protection agency said to them you have done all the right things we cannot do anything more than what you have done child protection agency has their hands full with these kinds of things but I believe as churches we need to prove to them that we are proactive in dealing with these kinds of things so that we can win their their their support or they realize that we are going to do something about it we are not going to let it slip through the cracks I want to yeah to get help for both of them it's going to be almost impossible for a parent to appropriately minister to both the perpetrator and the victim and as a final it may be necessary even to relocate because there's a tremendous bonding that happens if this abuse happened in this house then that person always associates that with this house it may be necessary to relocate just we're starting all over fresh again as a family but above all things the gospel is able to redeem these situations we've seen it happen and this crisis able to redeem your situation we need to prove that we care and that we are concerned and do all that we can to protect our children thank you brother Donald I have a question for you what should the victim do if there is a victim caught in this thing what should he or she do a young child or a young person well I would say the first thing is to expose the problem if it's a parent what do they do you're saying the parent is the victim let's say the parent is the perpetrator oh well there's obviously two parents the child needs to go to the other parent I would say first but then beyond that reach out to pastor or someone who can help definitely reach out to someone it has to be exposed it won't go away any other way and I would not want to think that anybody here is in that circumstance but if there would be and we would want the victim to seek help from a trusted let's say a pastor's wife or pastor victims are sometimes silenced by threats yes that's right that's a very difficult situation especially for a young child that doesn't realize that there is help available thank you for that brother Donny well is there anything else that we need to say on this topic or a question you'd like to ask brother Donny just one statement but we I connected with the brother down in Austin, Texas who came up this weekend Rick Naylor Rick I don't know if you wouldn't mind to stand up because people might want to talk to you but Rick started a nonprofit called partners against child trafficking and ironically a lot of these issues end up lending themselves into the child sex trafficking arena and it's unfathomable to even think about these things especially in these circles here but in the world that we live in today it's the largest industry in the country so just something to be aware of and if you have questions for Rick he's a great resource to talk about some of these issues here so thank you very much yes one of the things I appreciated you mentioned there at the last brother Don and I think we've all mentioned it but that's one thing that we all have here no matter how bad things have gotten we live in the land where repentance is still available and that's whether you're perpetrator the victim or wherever there is a path to freedom it may be through separation it may be through the prison system but there is a path and there are people that don't have that path available to them anymore and I talked to people sometimes they've seemed to harden their hearts there's people that would love to trade places with you today people that are in hell right now they would just love to trade places no matter how bad things have gotten in your life they would love to trade places with you because you have the opportunity to humble yourself they don't you have the opportunity to repent they don't and so no matter where things are that's the hope that we have some day and don't waste it while it's open yes go ahead I'd like to ask you a question Donny so how do you prevent these things I mean in our fellowship in Boston we have 25 children running around we're all fairly vigilant in things but we know that visitors kids could come in I mean what kind of things they're bringing in what sort of safeguards would you suggest setting up ahead of time preemptively preventing some of these things thank you that was a part that I missed because I was running out of time perpetual vigilance know where your children are at all times that sounds like a big assignment but you should know where your children are who they're associating with at all times sleeping arrangements say no to sleepovers mostly it's not necessary if it's just for fun mostly it's not necessary at least know what kind of a home you challenge going into if it is necessary for them to sleep over somewhere protect your daughters you know a popular house design now is to put mom and dad downstairs and the children upstairs a perfect setting for things to go wrong maybe give the girls the master bedroom downstairs and you sleep upstairs with the boys just simple things like that practical but protect your daughters they only have their virginity once once it's lost it's gone and you don't want it to happen so take these kinds of extreme measures to protect your daughters establish boundaries for your family there's things that we will not do we will not allow be proactive in protecting your children I'm sure these brothers have all kinds of other ideas as well thank you very much that is so very good we're out of time these brothers are down in the front or on the outside here in the front and if anybody wishes to speak to them please feel free to do so I wrote down a number of words as I thought about concluding this vigilance, repentance, confession, transparency yieldedness to God but above all that I have one word for solution and that word is Jesus Jesus the savior of the world who cured the blind people he calmed the storms he cast out demons and he raised the dead and most certainly it is my conviction that this same Jesus who can change our inside can change our most basic orientation into an orientation that pleases him and God has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ above all else as we face this onslaught of immorality let's keep our eyes steadily on him and our faith on him Amen