 So no particular order to these, I'll just ask them and we've got Pastor Rick preaching tomorrow and also our brother Mike back again tomorrow. And so let them take a shot here at answering these and helping us out. And so the first question is this, many of you I know have witnessed two homosexuals before I have. And one of the questions that came to us was when you're witnessing to a homosexual and they start trying to justify a homosexual position from the scriptures, and they begin to argue with you throwing out Hebrew words, throwing out Greek words. How would you respond to them in that circumstance? There's like you spoke tonight, Mike, about gay Christians and I know they believe they have scriptural foundation for that. So when someone responds to you that way and they begin throwing out Hebrew Greek words to you and trying to twist the scriptures, how do you respond to them? In my life, a couple of things that I shared tonight, there's not one verse out of the 30,000 in the scripture that speaks positively about homosexuality. So challenge them. Show me one verse that validates your behavior, that speaks of it in a positive way. Show me one verse that describes marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman. And so what you want to do is to challenge them. You be on the offensive, put them on the defensive because they want to try and put you on the defensive. But take the offense. It's your requirement, if you call yourself a Christian, to show me in the Bible where God's word justifies your sinful behavior. Okay. Yeah, I know I was looking in the study and you can't help but getting into some of the garbage that's peddled with respect to this. And you come across something really quickly called the Queen James Bible. You heard of that? There's something called the Queen James Bible and a perversion in and of itself as you can imagine. But one of the things they do, I know with the Old Testament, with the New Testament as well, for starters, you can go on there and it's clearly attested to as well that there is... Oh, am I covering up? Okay. Getting instruction from the back. Thank you, brother. And one of the things that's very clearly attested to is that there are no Greek or Hebrew scholars that would validate their interpretation or their translation of Scripture. So there are no Greek scholars, no Hebrew scholars that would say what they're doing with the Scripture, what they're saying is correct. And one of the things they do with the Old Testament is with respect to Sodom and Gomorrah or the Levitical law, Leviticus 18, is they'll add a phrase in there to the God of Malik in order to say that the Levitical prohibition against homosexuality is with respect to cult ritualistic worship. The Canaanites or others practiced ritualistic prostitution or ritualistic sex in their worship of the God of Malik. And so they say, well, that prohibition is simply in worship. It's not pertaining to monogamous or a consensual relationship between two people that God was prohibiting sexual acts with respect to worship. Simply not true. And that phrase is simply not in the text. In other places they would say that the Greek text that Paul in the New Testament was speaking of heterosexual people, heterosexual males in particular, that departed from their natural heterosexual practice to practice homosexuality. Simply, you can't get that at all from the text. And isn't that the definition of what homosexuality is to begin with? Those who are created by God to be heterosexual are leaving the natural practice of heterosexuality for homosexuality. So it just simply doesn't hold up, doesn't make sense. But you'd have to go on and have to look at some of those texts. And you can find those if you just Google online, Queen James Bible. You're going to see all of those texts and how they twist them to make that work. Mark another thing we can say is that everywhere in the Bible, sex outside of marriage is always sin. And so if you're not married, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual, and you're having sex, that is a sin before a holy God. And so that leads into, well, what about when gay people married? Is it still considered sin? Well, again, you go back to that once in the Bible, do you see marriage defined any other way other than a man and a woman? And so marriage between a man and a man is forbidden by the Bible. And so that's the way you can show that anything they're doing, whether it be inside of marriage or outside of marriage, it's a sin before a holy God. What would you say to those that say, well, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ never spoke specifically about homosexuality. He never specifically condemns it. How would you answer that objection, Trace? Well, all of the Scripture is God's Word. We don't just look at the red letters to where Jesus spoke. We take all of it as God's Word. But we can say things like, nowhere in the Lord's pre-resurrection ministry did he ever mention the word grace. But no one would deny that we are saved by grace. So why wouldn't the Savior mention grace in his pre-resurrection ministry? The other thing that's fascinating, as we're in this subject of, show me where Christ spoke anything about homosexuality, did you know when the Gospel went forth in the New Testament in the book of Acts, not once do you find the mention of the word love? And yet we live in a society now that says God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not the call to repentance that the first century apostles used as a method of evangelism. So, yeah, those arguments don't really cure any weight when you consider some of the other things that are said and not said in Scripture. And you could also, like I think about the Lord's teaching in Mark chapter 7. And when he mentions it out of the heart of man, it's what comes out of the heart that defiles the man. And he mentions in there sexual immorality, specifically the term porneia, which encompasses all of these sexual perversions and adultery, those kinds of things. So he did teach on it. But then, yeah, I love that statement. It's God's Word. And so the one who wrote the Old Testament, the words, those are Christ's words, too. You can't separate the Trinity. Amen. All right. Well, in your witnessing, if you've witnessed two homosexuals before about the Gospel, what have you learned from some of your witnessing or evangelistic encounters with homosexuals? Well, we have to recognize that when you witness to a homosexual, they're just like any other unregenerate person. The Bible says that they are dead in their sins. They are blinded from the truth of the Gospel by the Prince of this world. They cannot hear the words of Christ because their ears are stopped up. They're a natural man and they cannot discern spiritual things. And so as you witness, we have to keep in mind our responsibility is to sow the seed of God's Word and then pray that those seeds find fertile soil. But ultimately, it's the sovereignty of God that brings forth life to those who are dead in their sins. We've been given the great privilege and the awesome responsibility to communicate God's Word. We are successful every time we've done that. Our position is no different from that of a mailman. Is a mailman responsible for people answering the mail and paying their bills? No, he has been completely successful when he delivered the mail to everybody on his route. If we will have that mindset as witnesses for Christ, we have to deliver the message of Christ to those in our circle of influence. And then God is responsible for what they do with the message. I've found folks talking to them too that they are... I can't say that I remember having a really hostile conversation with anyone that was practicing homosexual. Usually they're aware, especially when you start preaching to them or start talking to them about the Bible, they're aware that obviously we view their lifestyle as sin and so they're not hostile. It doesn't seem to me that I hadn't experienced that myself or they're hostile to talk about it. And I would say, I've heard people say before, well, you know, I've got this impression or I understand that they're homosexuals and so I'm just going to focus on other aspects of the law. When I witness to them, I would advise you just encourage you to go directly to that sin. If you suspected, ask them, you know, are you practicing homosexual? And I mean, that's where you... the purpose of the law is to convict them of sin, to point them to Christ. And so if you... speaking to a homosexual, bring up that sin and begin discussing it with them. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and that's going to... from God's word, hopefully the Lord will use that to bring conviction. Anything you'd like to add, brother? Okay. You're doing great, Pastor. All right. The next question is, how do we defend against the changes in laws concerning gay marriage? How do we defend against the changes in laws concerning gay marriage? With regards to the legalities or the acceptance of homosexual marriage and other sort of aspects of the law, either in school or in public, the only thing that we can do as citizens is vote, right? So when we have the opportunity, we could do that voice our opinions. But other than that, the Bible, the New Testament specifically is very clear that we live in a rebellious and dying world. And sin will continue to increase, lawless men will continue to increase, and people will increase in their hatred of Christianity and all that is sound and good. So exercise your right to vote, but pray earnestly that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers into the harvest field and pray for His coming. Yeah, we have to keep in mind too, I mentioned that the homosexual population in America is three or four percent, and yet look at the great inroads a few people have made in having our laws changed. The born again Christians in America far outnumber the three or four percent of homosexuals, but most of those are apathetic, they're indifferent and lazy, and so their voices are not being heard. And so more than ever I think the church needs to do what the church is called to do, be the salt and light in this earth and to go out and battle in the spiritual warfare because ultimately the warfare is between Satan and God and it's for the souls of men. And so if we do nothing, then Satan has an easy way with the souls of men. We have to rally the church and we can never let a lie of the devil go unabated. When a person stands up and spews a lie, we have every right to stand up and defend the glory and honor of our great God and Savior by speaking the truth from His Word. Just recently in Plano, Texas, which I think is the largest suburb of Dallas now, the city council just last month passed a new ordinance for equal rights for homosexuals to include that if you feel like you're a transgender even though you haven't had an operation, if you feel more feminine, you're allowed to go into a woman's restroom and use that if you're a man. And so this is just outrageous that this is happening in conservative Dallas. Five of the people that voted for this ordinance, three of them claim to be Christians. And so fortunately one of the pastors in our city gathered all the pastors in all churches throughout Plano and said we need to stand against this. And so the only way to defeat or to overturn the ordinances, they required about 4,000 signatures. And so the church rallied and we went out and we got, I think the last I heard there was 10,000 signatures far surpassing the number we needed. And so now this is going to come up for a vote and it'll go before the citizens of Plano to overturn this ordinance. So that's how the church can get involved. When you see something happen, let your voices be heard. Don't let these left wing aggressive agendas come in and take over the city councils because that's ultimately what they're doing. They're very well funded but yet we outnumber them. So we just need to rally and encourage others, other Christians to get into the fight. The next question is this. What's the difference between homosexuality and sodomy in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 9? The difference between homosexual, I think some of the translations say effeminate. I'd like to respond to that. So I'll read the passage. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. In my version in the ESV, those two terms, the two Greek terms are translated into one phrase. Nor men who practice homosexuality. One term refers to the passive partner and the other term refers to the active partner in consensual homosexual acts. That's why you have the two terms there. I'm all for calling homosexual people sodomites. They've hijacked the word gay, which is a lovely word in the English dictionary. They've hijacked our rainbow, which is God's promise that he will never flood the earth again. So we need to take those words back. Let's call them what they are. The Bible calls them sodomites. When I grew up, I'm older than most people here, but I can remember freshmen in high school. We called homosexuals queers. And it was shameful to be a queer in the American society back in the 60s. But this is how far we've come in just a few years. Now they're called gay and it's a great marketing technique. And I think many people are embracing them because they're gay people. They're not sodomites. The term derives from Genesis chapter 19, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is the men of the city wanted to impose themselves upon the two angels, messengers that God had sent into that city. They wanted to know them carnally. They wanted to have sex with them. They wanted to lay with them as a man would lay with a woman. Next question is this. If the media approaches us while we're open air preaching, regarding preaching on homosexuality, how should we answer? I would just keep preaching. We have the right to speak. And I know the brothers here. I know what you say and the heart. So I would tell you continue to preach. And if they put you in jail, praise God. And I've always found too that whenever you're confronted, it's always good to ask questions because ultimately the more questions you ask, you're going to find that they can't answer them. And we can talk about the freedom of speech, the freedom that we have, not only to express our opinion, but also to express our convictions, which are found and rooted in the Word of God. That's our right as American citizens. So we need to stand on the right and defend the glory and honor of our great God and Savior, even if the means go into jail. And remember, we as Christians and as a church, we're to be respectful to the civil magistrates. So what I mean by continuing to preach, if you're approached by a police officer and they ask you not to explain to them that you have the right, and if they're just hostile, not agreeing, want you to stop, be respectful. Don't dishonor them. Don't argue with them. Don't do anything like that. Go away rejoicing. You're counted worthy to suffer the same for his name. I'll ask that our brother would put this on our website too. We have two documents from Liberty Council. Both documents outline or explain our right to preach the gospel in public spaces. And so I advise you to go on the website and download those. If you need copies, you can email us here. We'll get copies of those to you. And just take them out with you when you go. If you know you're going to be open air preaching and you're going to be on that subject, then it might be handy to have that with you. Just clearly outlines freedom of speech and our right to be able to preach the gospel in public spaces. You could hand that to somebody that's not familiar with it. I think the ordinance numbers are on there. Yeah, the ordinance number, statute numbers are all on there as well. So yeah, really helpful documents. Okay, the next question, and we may cover a little bit of this in the sessions that follow, but what is the connection between the homosexual agenda and NAMBLA? NAMBLA is the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The connections, go ahead. I think the most comprehensive book that I've read on this particular subject, when you're talking about how homosexuality has impacted our culture, is written by Michael Brown. And the title of the book is A Queer Thing Happened to America. I can't remember all of the details of the particular chapter, but it's Chapter 7. So what I mean about particular is names. But he clearly lays out in Chapter 7, and he shows how at the very inception of the promotion of homosexuality as normative, not as sin, that it was promoted by pedophiles and padrists. So I would get my hands on that. There is a very close connection to the two. It doesn't mean that every homosexual is a pedophile or that every pedophile is a homosexual. That's not the connection that I'm trying to make, but that at the very inception, at the very beginning, when people start to speak out some of those representatives, the many, as he points out, very clearly in Chapter 7 of his book, were padrists and pedophiles. We were talking about this some last night, that the thing that sort of sparked the beginning of the homosexual agenda, and they're coming out, so to speak, were riots in New York in 1969, called the Stonewall Riots. And shortly after that, by 1972, there was a gay rights, a national gay rights activist organization that printed, published an agenda for the gay rights movement. And the first item on that agenda was to lobby government for equal rights for homosexuals, equal rights with respect to marriage, with respect to healthcare, with respect to bills, those kinds of things, were going to lobby Congress. The second item on the agenda was the removal of the age of consent laws for consensual homosexual sex. And so you can read in between the lines there, what that does is give them, and what they're looking for, was the right to have consensual relationships with children anywhere from ages 8 to 16. And those laws are still being fought today. In fact, they've been removed already in some places. Recently here on the news, there was a relationship revealed between a child, daughter, and her father. So you have both incest and pedophilia in that household. And apparently that's being approved in the courts for them to go ahead and marry now. So there's always been a connection there between those two movements. If you look at it really closely too, we'll probably talk about this some tomorrow. The arguments in favor of homosexual rights or gay marriage in the courts are the very same arguments being used to politic for acceptance from the courts for pedorasty or pedophilia. So there's a really strong connection between the two. In other words, wickedness doesn't stand still. Wickedness doesn't stagnate. It permeates. It becomes pervasive. It continues to progress. And one of the progressions of the perversion is pedophilia. There's a lot more than just that, but that's just an example of one of many. So there's a connection. And unless you think that's unusual, it's gaining ground in the United States, Nambla, North America, Man Boy Love Association. But that organization is already accepted in many other countries around the world where it is openly practiced and openly accepted. So very interesting. The next question is this. We'll wrap up here quickly. There was a statement made that humans are the only ones who practice homosexuality. I've heard many times that certain animals practice homosexual behavior. Therefore, because animals practice it, it's considered natural, how do you respond to that? The term natural or the way that a person would want to define natural is very subjective. So what we need to do is to understand the purpose for sexuality is we have to understand what God says about human sexuality. We live in a fallen and corrupt world. So if two male dogs decide that they're going to buddy up, that has no bearing upon what human beings who are created in the image of God do. Because God, from the very beginning, made them male and female. And very distinctly, God made humans as creatures who are to come together in a sexual union for their entire lives. So any kind of distortion that we see in the world that doesn't account for the original purpose and plan of God for men and women is because of the fall. And as Paul states clearly in Romans chapter 6, those sins can clearly be repented of, forgiveness can be found in Christ, and sanctification can occur in the mind, in the heart, and in the body of those people who struggle with those difficulties. So whether an animal does something that's aberrant, even for beasts, does not make it okay for humans because what God originally intended was men and women together. Amen. Two, it'd be an abnormality in nature, not a normality. You have to remember that. What does the abnormal point to? The norm. There is a norm. Every single person knows what that norm is because God has imprinted his fingerprint upon everything he made, and human beings are part of that creation. And God has given us a specific function and purpose in this world. And until we, by his grace, line up to that function and purpose, we'd live abnormally. And many of those you're going to witness to are anti-Christianity, so they're thinking evolutionary thoughts also, natural selection. And so what do you think would happen if homosexuality in the animal kingdom were normal? Those species would go out of existence in a hurry. So that's a good point. Thank you, brother Rick. Okay. Well, that's all we have time for tonight, and so we need to let you go. But if we did not get to your question tonight, I've looked through the questions, and a lot of these are going to be answered in the sessions that we'll have tomorrow. But if for some reason we don't get to your question tomorrow, then we'll have a Q&A at the end of the day tomorrow, please write those questions down again for us if you don't mind. We'll answer them tomorrow after the last session. And if you want to try to catch us, I mean, if you want to catch me between the session, I would be glad to answer any questions you have. Likewise. Has this been helpful so far? Praise the Lord. Okay. Well, let's pray and let's get you home. Thank you so much for coming. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow. We begin. We'll have continental breakfast. I begin, I believe, at 8 o'clock, and then we'll start the first session at 9 a.m., all right? Let's pray. Father in Heaven, so grateful to you to be here, so thankful for these brothers and sisters who've come and for our guests and visitors. I just pray, Lord, that you continue to bless our brother Mike, Pastor Rick, as they speak to us, minister to us tomorrow. Pray for just safe travel for folks going home and that they'd be back safe tomorrow. And just pray that this would, again, Lord, edify the saints, that it would be for the good of your people. They would inform our evangelism that, Lord, that lost people would be saved from hearing the gospel and, Lord, that it would be for your glory, for your namesake. We pray all these things in the blessed name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.