Why are Christians allowed to eat shellfish but not allowed to have sex before marriage?

Here’s a wonderful article from Peter Saunders.

The challenge:

An argument frequently advanced by those attempting to defend homosexual practice is that Christians ‘cherry pick’ the commands in the Bible – that is, they chose to emphasise some commands while ignoring others.

The Old Testament may forbid homosexual acts (Leviticus 18:2; 20:13) but it also forbids eating seafood without fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12; Deuteronomy 14:9, 10).

So how can Christians then justify upholding laws on sexual morality whilst at the same time ignoring the food laws from the very same books of the Bible? Why may they eat shellfish but not be allowed to have sex outside marriage? Isn’t this inconsistent and hypocritical?

The solution is that God enters into “covenants” with his people, and the terms of those covenants change.

Especially dietary laws:

The answer to this question lies in an understanding of biblical covenants.

A covenant is a binding solemn agreement made between two parties. It generally leaves each with obligations. But it holds only between the parties involved.

There are a number of biblical covenants: Noahic, Abrahamic, Sinaitic (Old), Davidic and New.

Under the Noahic covenant, which God made with all living human beings (Genesis 9:8-17), people were able to eat anything:

‘Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything’ (Genesis 9:3).

But under the Sinaitic (Old) Covenant, which God made with the nation of Israel, people were able to eat certain foods, but not others.

Jesus clearly created a new covenant with his followers, where the dietary laws are lifted:

Jesus said that he had come to fulfil the ‘Law and the Prophets’ (Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:44). He would establish this new covenant with new laws, with himself as high priest based on his own sacrificial death on the cross.

This new covenant would completely deal with sin (Hebrews 10:1-18) and protect all those who put their faith in him from God’s wrath and judgement…

[…]‘In the same way, after the supper (Jesus) took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”’ (Luke 22:20). ‘…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (Hebrews 10:10)

People would come under the protection of this new covenant, not by virtue of belonging to the nation of Israel, but through faith in Christ. In fact the function of the Old Testament Law (Sinaitic covenant) was to point to Christ as its fulfilment.

[…]So what then did Christ say about foods? He pronounced all foods clean for his followers to eat:

‘ “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them?  For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder,  adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:18-23)

Jesus was making that point that under the new covenant God required purity of the heart. Internal thoughts and attitudes were as important as external actions.

Food is OK for Christians, but sexual immorality – which includes premarital sex and adultery – are NOT OK for Christians.

I think sometimes when you are talking to people whose motivation is just to get rid of any objective moral law entirely, they tend to ask questions without really wanting a good answer. This is especially true when it comes to the morality of sex. They ask the question not to get an answer, but to justify getting rid of the moral rules governing sexuality. The answers are there for people who are willing to respect God in their decision-making to find. The answers are not found only by people who have a reason to not want to find them.

In case you’re wondering, I am one of those Christian men who takes chastity seriously. Marriage is about having a close connection with your spouse. Sure, I could break the rules and have a lot of fun now. A lot of Christians have a hard time turning down fun. But when I look at Jesus, I don’t see a man who is pursuing fun and thrills. I see a man who sees a need and then sacrifices his own interests to rescue others from peril.

How Democrats and the corporate media lied about January 6th

This post is just a quick link-around to three stories that cover the three biggest revelations from the Capitol video on January 6th, 2021. The secular left told us that there was an insurrection, that there were weapons, and violence and an attempt to seize control of the Capitol by armed militias who attacked and killed police officers. But what really happened?

New York Post:

Newly revealed surveillance footage from Jan. 6, 2021, shows two Capitol Police officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the behorned so-called “QAnon Shaman” who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the US Senate.

The footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Monday night shows the officers closely following Chansley as he wanders the corridors of the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing face paint and a luxuriant fur hat with Viking horns.

“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” says Carlson, who was granted exclusive access by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day inside and around the Capitol, which has never been seen before by the public.

“The tapes show the Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”

In a statement, the Capitol Police suggest that one of the officers with Chansley was trying to “de-escalate” the situation because he was outnumbered.

But that does not explain why Chansley, who was unarmed, was able to walk past seven more officers without being apprehended.

“Not one of them even tried to slow him down,” says Carlson.

He “understood that the Capitol Police were his allies. … If he was in the act of committing such a grave crime, why didn’t the officers standing right next to him place him under arrest?”

And yet in the narrative formed that day by Democrats and much of the media, “Jacob Chansley became the face of January 6, a dangerous conspiracy theorist dressed in an outlandish costume who led the violent insurrection to overthrow America’s democracy,” says Carlson.

The Democrats in the legislature are furious with Republicans for releasing the video, since it falsifies their “insurrection” narrative.

More from New York Post:

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick still is described as a victim of January 6, murdered by President Donald Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol, despite an autopsy report which shows he died of a stroke the following day.

The New York Times initially reported that Sicknick had been beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, before retracting the claim more than a month later.

To this day, media accounts claim Sicknick was “slain” on Jan. 6, and powerful Democrats, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, have continued to cite his death as evidence of a “deadly insurrection” at the Capitol that day.

But hitherto unseen surveillance footage from inside the Capitol, aired by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night, contradicts that claim.

It shows Sicknick walking through the building “after he was supposedly murdered by the mob outside.”

Sicknick appears to be healthy and walking normally in the footage.

He gesticulates to protesters to move out of the building, and bends down to move a placard behind a statue.

He also is wearing a helmet, so, as Carlson points out, “it’s hard to imagine he was killed by a head injury.”

You can read about how the New York Times printed false news about this story, and then was forced to retract it months later.

And finally Breitbart:

Mysterious January 6 figure Ray Epps lied to the January 6 Committee about when he left the Capitol grounds on the day of the riot, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson argued Monday.

Carlson, releasing never seen video footage from January 6, 2021, alleged that Epps misled the January 6 Committee in a sworn testimony. Carlson claimed to have Epps’s text messages that he sent to a relative about leaving the Capitol grounds later than he disclosed to the committee.

“Under public pressure, the January 6 Committee finally interviewed Ray Epps. He told the committee he never entered the Capitol and therefore never committed a crime,” Carlson explained. “In text messages showed that at 2:12:00 PM, he boasted to his nephew that he had ‘orchestrated’ the protest at the Capitol.”

“He admitted he helped get people there,” Carlson said. “Tonight, we can tell you that at the very least Ray Epps lied in his sworn testimony to the January 6th Committee. Epps testified that when he sent the text messages to his nephew, he had already left the Capitol grounds to return to his hotel room. That is not true.”

“The surveillance footage we found that shows in fact Ray Epps remained at the Capitol for at least another half an hour,” Carlson said, allegedly displaying the video proof. “What was Epps doing? We cannot say, but we do know that he lied to investigators. The January 6 Committee likely knew this too. Democrats had access to the same tape, yet they defended Ray Epps.”

Tucker noted his video shows Epps encouraging protestors outside the Capitol Building to enter.

“We do know from the contemporaneous video that a mysterious figure called Ray Epps encouraged the crowd to go into the Capitol. For some reason Epps has never been indicted for that,” Carlson said. “There is no question he did it.”

When Ted Cruz asked federal law enforcement officials about their involvement in organizing and leading the “insurrection”, there was no outright denial. The woman being questioned just refused to answer.

Meanwhile, there’s been no charges about insurrection for Black Lives Matter or Antifa, because they are the allies of the secular left, and their real violence is just ignored by the secular left.

Southern Poverty Law Center hate group is again linked to domestic terrorism

Everyone remembers how the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” web site was used by gay activist Floyd Lee Corkins to plan and attempt a violent mass shooting hate crime at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, a conservative pro-marriage, pro-family think tank in Washington, D.C. And now the SPLC has been linked to domestic terrorism a second time.

Here’s the story from Daily Wire:

An attorney with the far-left nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested Sunday for allegedly committing domestic terrorism to stop a police facility from being built.

The Atlanta police department said Sunday night that Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the 23 people charged after a “group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.”

According to the State Bar of Georgia, Thomas Webb Jurgens is an attorney for the SPLC who was admitted to the bar in 2021.

The FBI is a long-time partner of the SPLC, and so it’s no surprise that they label religious people “domestic terrorists”:

Last month, an FBI whistleblower leaked a document showing that the FBI was investigating those practicing “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” as potential domestic extremists, in part by citing that the SPLC listed the faction among its “hate groups.”

The FBI previously called the SPLC “a well-known, established and credible” organization, and it has briefed the FBI on purported domestic terror, Fox News reported.

The FBI has links to left-wing hate groups, which is why they turn a blind eye to the crimes of other left-wing domestic terrorists, and prosecute peaceful pro-lifers and concerned parents instead. FBI leaders really have hate in their hearts for religious people, and it affects the way they do their jobs. These are not professional people. They lack integrity. These are immoral people who collect money from the law-abiding people, then they persecute those law-abiding people. They ignore real threats to America’s security and peace.

Let’s walk down memory lane and remember what happens when “non-religious” people who don’t like “organized religion” get hold of guns and decide to act on their non-religious convictions. In this case, the shooter was a gay activist who was a great admirer of Friedrich Nietzche, the atheist philosopher who proclaimed the death of God.

The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

The man accused of opening fire and shooting a security guard at the conservative Family Research Council headquarters last August plead guilty to three charges in a D.C. federal court Wednesday.

Floyd Lee Corkins, II of Herndon, Virginia entered guilty pleas to a federal weapons charge as well as a local terrorism charge and a charge of assault with intent to kill, according to news reports.

The Washington Post reports that, according to the plea agreement Corkins signed, he… “intended to kill as many people as possible” and planned to “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.”

Investigators found additional magazines and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack on the day of the shooting.

Following the guilty plea the FRC issued a statement placing a large portion of the blame for the shooting at the feet of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which had listed FRC as a hate group. FRC noted that prosecutors discovered Corkins identified his targets on the SPLC’s website.

“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” FRC president Tony Perkins said in a statement, which went on to demand that SPLC stop attacking organizations that have a different opinion on gay rights.

The shooting happened shortly after Chick-fil-A made headlines over the company president’s disagreement with gay marriage.

Why does anyone think that people on the secular left are tolerant? They keep talking about “atheist objective morality” and “secular humanism”, but all I see from the secular left is domestic terrorism.