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February 12, 2002
GOD’S WILL FOR YOU AT HIS COMING
The indented sentences are from the
book, PERHAPS TODAY,
by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
A twenty-one-year-old college student
once told me, "Pastor, I think I am oversexed! " I felt his statement
could have only been prompted by what he permitted to live in his mind. When I
asked how he spent his free time, he admitted to reading Playboy and Hustler
magazines. Then he protested, "I don't buy them; they are always available
in our frat house." When I asked what TV and movies he had experienced, he
finally admitted to watching the HBO channel and a steady diet of R-rated films.
I told him that he was probably not
oversexed. It is just that at twenty-one, he was at the highest point of his sex
drive and he was overstimulating that drive with pornography and sexually
explicit entertainment. I also warned him that because he had been living on
such a steady junk diet of the mind, that it would probably take him a couple of
months to overcome his mental feeding habit. I told him that with spiritual
discipline he could gradually replace those lustful thoughts with wholesome
images. Then I designed a regular Bible reading and study program for him,
including three weeks of Scripture memorization. After faithfully practicing
this new discipline, his mental perversions were replaced and his mind was
purified.
What the Lord Jesus Christ stated is sin, Tim LaHaye calls
"overstimulating that drive." Jesus calls what that young man
was doing adultery: "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman
to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
Matthew 5:28. This young man's problem was that he was SINNING (nowhere is
this mentioned here) and that God considered him an adulterer! Why was SIN
not called by its rightful name? Why was it not make clear this young man
was an adulterer in the sight of God?
The advice given to this young man was
positively unbiblical because he was told by the writer that he could "gradually
replace those lustful thoughts with wholesome images." This is a psychological,
humanistic way to approach sin and is against the teachings of the Holy Bible!
Jesus told us that sin is so serious that
if we have to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand to stop sinning, we must do
this: "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to
enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into
hell fire:" Mark 9:47
Is the sin this young man was partaking of
in the "cast into hell fire" list of sins? Yes! "Know ye not that the
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of
themselves with mankind. . ." 1 Cor. 6:9
Adulterers do not enter into the kingdom of
heaven! What must we do about youthful lusts? Should we adopt some kind of
replacement program so we can gradually wean ourselves from our lusts? Not
according to the Word of God, which cannot lie: "Flee also youthful
lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on
the Lord out of a pure heart." 2 Tim. 2:22
We are to FLEE youthful lusts! We are
to do what it takes even to the point of cutting off or plucking out something
that pains us to do because it is better to do that than to remain in our sin and be
cast into hell fire.
Tim LaHaye never mentioned forsaking this sin
and fleeing from it no matter what it costs, even to the point of leaving the frat house to avoid being
in that wicked environment, and abstaining from television and
movies. (Almost all of it is filthy today; you don't need HBO to be
destroyed by the moral decadence in almost every television commercial.)
Also nothing was mentioned of the demonic
strongholds the young man invited into his life through his willful participation in
this moral filth, and how these need to be dealt with in Jesus' Name or else
they will plague him for the rest of his life by working to try to get him to
fall back into this sin.
Tim LaHaye did not tell this young man to REPENT of
this sin and to RENOUNCE it! (See 2 Cor. 4:2)
Instead he was given a Bible-reading and
scripture memory program that is supposed to replace the perversion. Yes,
Bible reading and scripture memory is needed, but it will never take the place
of confession of SIN (not calling it something else besides sin, like being
"oversexed"), 1 Jn. 1:9, repentance and forsaking of the sin, renouncing the
satanic strongholds he had invited into his own life by his rebellion to God,
and deliverance of these strongholds in the Name of Jesus Christ!
All pornographic material, in any form
has accompanying demons that do attach themselves to the life of any Christian
willing to defile his temple (his body) in this manner. Simply using some
kind of replacement technique might or might not work for a season, but it will
not take care of the root problem. We must deal with sin and obey the
Bible where it tells us to "cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of flesh
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." 2 Cor. 7:12
Perhaps
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