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What do you call someone who hates certain people groups, purposely causes dissention, stirs up strife, and does his level best to make Christians look like a bunch of wild-eyed, Bible-thumping weirdos? Surely, there is a name for someone like that. However, The Refiner's Fire doesn't resort to name-calling; and therefore, we will simply expose and Biblically examine the antics of "Pastor" Fred Phelps, Sr. - the "God hates fags" guy who struts around the country harassing homosexuals and picketing the funerals of America's fallen heroes.
Phelps is the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, whose website spews forth all sorts of vindictive and hateful rhetoric against whomever isn't affiliated, or associated with their church. According to his cussword-ridden website, "God Hates Fags" (removed after our expose of this hideous cult), Phelps has conducted more than 22,000 picketing demonstrations across the U.S. and in some foreign countries over the past 12 years. He is a "Five-Point Calvinist who urges all people to carefully study and discern what are the signs of the times in the light of the Scriptures rightly divided and church history from Adam to now."
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Quick comment from The Refiner's Fire:
Reverend Phelps, if there was a fundamental Baptist church in the Garden of Eden, it wasn't mentioned in the Bible....Furthermore, if you truly understood the meaning of "signs of the times" and "Scriptures rightly divided" - you would have figured out by now that you, yourself embody "the signs of the times" as a false prophet, since hardly anything you proclaim lines up with the Bible.
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Let's examine the ideology of this "pastor", beginning with his seemingly favorite subject: the venomous hatred of homosexuals whom he adamantly insists "God hates", as outlined on his former website's "Purpose" statement:
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....The certainty that all impenitent sodomites (under the elegant metaphor of "FAGS" as the contraction of faggots, fueling the fires of God's wrath) will inevitably go to Hell (e.g., Romans 1:18-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, Jude 7, etc.)
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Perhaps someone needs to inform "Reverend" Phelps that he will never find the term "fag" or "faggot" in the Bible; nor will he find any place where God says He "hates" homosexuals. While the Bible certainly does show us that God hates certain people BECAUSE of their particular sin (e.g., "you hate all who do evil" - Psalms 5:4), He does NOT call them names, such as "fags". Furthermore, you won't even find the term "homosexual" in the King James Bible because it is a relatively modern term. Here is exactly what ADONAI says about same-sex unions:
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Leviticus 18: 22 "You are not to go to bed with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Leviticus 20: 13 "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable."
Deuteronomy 22: 5 "A woman is not to wear men's clothing, and a man is not to put on women's clothing, for whoever does these things is detestable to ADONAI your God.
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Three key New Testament passages concerning homosexuality are: Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10 - While it's excruciatingly clear that God detests the acts of homosexuality and cross-dressing, NONE of these verses say anything about God HATING the homosexuals!
The Bible tells us that God DOES "hate" certain behaviors/acts such as pride, lying, murder, perjury, and divorce except for reasons of adultery. And the Bible tells us that God hates (please pay attention, "Reverend" Phelps!) a person who tries to stir up discord/dissension among other believers:
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Proverbs 6:16-19: "There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers."
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Please notice that homosexuality did not make the above list! It would be more Biblical to promote phrases such as "God hates liars" and "God hates murderers."
Furthermore, we are specifically told that anyone who is guilty of name calling - as is Phelps! - will burn in hell. Yeshua Himself said it:
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Matthew 5: 22 But I tell you that anyone who nurses anger against his brother will be subject to judgment; that whoever calls his brother 'You good-for-nothing!' will be brought before the Sanhedrin; that whoever says, 'Fool!' incurs the penalty of burning in the fire of Gei-Hennom!"
Leviticus 19: 17 Do not hate your brother in your heart, but rebuke your neighbor frankly so that you won't carry sin because of him. 18 Don't take vengeance on or bear a grudge against any of your people; rather, love your neighbor as yourself; I am ADONAI.
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When all is said and done, Phelps exhibits many of the behaviors that God hates: envy, hatred, wrath, malice, anger. So the question remains: whose sin is worse: that of the homosexual, or that of "Pastor" Phelps?
The answer to this is: ALL sin is bad. God doesn't offer degrees of sinning. A "little lie" is just as bad as a "big lie". God never told us that it's "okay" to lie sometimes!
According to the Bible, the slightest amount of sin will send one to hell! Isn't that, after all, why Yeshua came? All - not just some - sins in "Old Testament" times required blood atonement/animal sacrifices. God didn't require animal sacrifices for just homosexual sins. Lying, murdering, coveting, adultery, having "other gods" or idols - they ALL required a sin sacrifice!
The good news is - Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) offered Himself as a FINAL Sin Sacrifice for all our PAST sins. And, although we can be forgiven over and over again for accidental sins, or whenever we TRULY repent, He did not give us carte blanche to continue deliberately sinning (1 Peter 3:18 and Hebrews 10:14) - which Reverend Phelps is absolutely guilty of as evidenced by his willful harassment of homosexuals, Jews, and America's fallen heroes!
Unless Reverend Phelps has some kind of God-given authority to ignore certain Scriptures in order to harass homosexuals, he is guilty of sinning! Rather than to harass and belittle homosexuals, perhaps Phelps would be better off trying to lead them to the Lord! After all, you can't harass someone into a saving knowledge of Christ....
The Bible tells us that every wrong deed will be remembered on Judgment Day and that veryone who keeps sinning is violating Torah - indeed, sin is violation of Torah. (Matthew 12: 36, Ecclesiastes 12:14 and 1 John 3:4) We therefore implore Reverend Phelps to immediately repent and cease his ungodly behavior so that he can be a beacon of light for God, rather than a stumbling block! He needs to clean up his own backyard before he can claim the right to criticize others.
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