QUESTION: Everything after Adam and Eve and before Christ constitutes a way of life under the curse of sin. Jesus returns us back to what marriage is meant to be from the beginning. The OT also blessed war and genocide for the purpose of cleansing the land. Will you argue that’s a viable option for us, too?
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ANSWER: Marriage, as it was in the beginning, never changed “under the curse of sin.” I don’t know how you came to this conclusion. So, your question regarding war and genocide is inapplicable. A male and a female who are virgins or widowed can still marry, no different than in the beginning or after it, although fleshly death wasn’t in the equation. If they remain faithful to each other until one of them dies, that marriage is exactly what God originally intended for a male and female. What Jesus was referring to when He declared to the Pharisees, “it was not so in the beginning,” was divorce with the Bill of Divorcement, where a wife could be sent away with a certificate for any reason, other than her committing sexual fornication, to become another man’s wife. As Jesus alluded to in Matthew 5:32, this certificate “caused” her to commit adulterous fornication, along with the man she married, which is against the original design of marriage. However, through Christ, a greater dimensional change in marriage exists between an eligible Christian male and Christian female, similar to, yet different from the design of the original creation. It is called a “Biblical marriage.” I allude to and explain the reason for that unique dimensional change in my chapters, “Biblical Marriage: A Christian Exclusive” and “Why Old Testament Men Had Multiple Wives.”
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QUESTION: There is A book titled “SACRED MARRIAGE: WHAT IF GOD DESIGNED MARRIAGE TO MAKE US HOLY MORE THAN TO MAKE US HAPPY, by Gary Thomas. Do you agree with this idea?
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ANSWER: Well, no! I haven’t read his book. I have only read some of the excerpts available online. My answer, however, is based on the logic of his concept. Everyone is always trying to figure out God’s purpose for marriage and to keep married couples from divorcing. I will offer my conclusion for its purpose after I state my reasons for not agreeing with the book’s premise. He states things that are good and proper, which hundreds of other books on marital coexistence already declare. Again, the concept.
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Firstly, did the marriage of Adam and Eve make either of them holy? It definitely turned out just the opposite. They were holy and became unholy within it. Along with this, did the marriages of the Old Testament make the couples holy? Is there any sign of it happening? Surely, if marriage were designed to do such a thing, there should be ample evidence of it. However, no such disposition is alluded to.
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Secondly, as I vividly and in many ways point out in my teaching on Biblical marriage in the book, if your marriage is defiled (fornicated) to begin with, how in the name of heaven could anything holy exist in it? Everything about the union is “worthy of judgment.” See my chapter “Biblical Instruction for the Married: Who Is Eligible to Receive It?” Of course, Mr. Thomas does not subscribe to my biblical teaching but subscribes to the false secular teachings prevalent in Christendom. So, he is ignorant of this truth.
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Thirdly, He is not stating a fact. He starts with a rhetorical question, “What if…,” conveying an uncertain supposition, yet many will view it as possible or probable. However, if anyone scrutinized the concept and its validity, the multitude of marital failures for various reasons would cast a huge cloud of doubt over his premise. Otherwise, if it were true, man, there would be a lot of holy people existing. He is doing what so many preachers, teachers, and writers in Christendom are striving to do: Desperately trying to convince people how marriage is sacred, discouraging divorce because “God hates divorce.” Yet, they are failing miserably because all their instruction and cajoling are built on a false, unbiblical secular foundation, where its tenets are not sacred at all, and without consequence.
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Now, my conclusion as to why marriage was created:
- As Scripture indicates, the female was made to provide companionship for the male and to be his helper in all he sets out to do in his earthly life and endeavors, not to help him become “holy.”
- God made them male and female, as He did with all of His other creations, for procreation. Instead of God constantly creating over and over on His own, He placed that power in creation itself to fulfill His will on earth. An example would be mice having been created to procreate to feed cats, birds, and other animals. The human female was created to procreate humans for God’s will in having “many sons.” And this occurs even in unholy defiled marriages, which have no bearing on the soul being created by them.
- When a marriage is “honorable,” and the joining is holy in Christ, it represents our pure joining with Christ as a member of His body, and the holy oneness that Christ and we will have with the new Jerusalem when He marries her, His wife.
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QUESTION: Paul specified that a Church LEADER should be the husband of one wife. Curious, isn’t it? Many Jews practiced polygamy throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament time. Many Jews even practiced polygamy well into the medieval era. So polygamy would not have been unknown to Paul. Yet he only specified Church leaders there. He never spoke out against polygamy as he did against other unjust relationships. He is, in fact, entirely quiet on the question. It becomes telling that he restricted leaders to something, yet did not reject it for the average church member.
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ANSWER: First off, you are talking about “polygyny,” which applies to men having more than one wife and not polygamy. Also, Paul taught the teachings of Christ in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about divorcing and marrying another, which means to be married to more than one, which constitutes adultery. So, polygyny was taught against for every Christian male. Adultery is becoming one flesh with more than one of the opposite sex or being sexually intimate with one who has already been sexually intimate and not free or eligible to be so with another. This constitutes an illegitimate marriage. Along with this, he did specify to Christian men, as a whole, in 1 Corinthians 7:2 stating a man is to have his “own” wife and the same with the wife having her “own” husband. This addresses “polygamy.”
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Now, the word “own” in 7:2 is significant, because it indicates two things: 1. They are to only be married to one other for themselves. 2. They are not to marry someone who is still a legitimate husband or wife of another. Hence, why Paul said, “to avoid fornication.” Understanding Biblical marriage, as I teach, is important. He is instructing them in verse one that if they are going to sexually touch a woman or a woman be touched by a man sexually, then it is to be with one person, who is eligible to be sexually intimate with. Sexual intimacy will create a marriage, and that is not restricted to intercourse. So, he did speak to Christian men in general of only having one legitimate wife. Regarding a Christian, this has nothing to do with Adam and Eve, as Christendom teaches.
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Now, why does he give explicit instruction to church leaders regarding this, since they were already aware of Christ’s teaching and what he declared in 1 Corinthians 7:2? The reason is because there were men who were saved and most likely gifted in the Holy Spirit, who were engaged in polygyny beforehand or at the time of their conversion. It was an “acceptable” practice before Christ, which Scripture reveals, as I delineate in the chapter in my book “Why Old Testament Men Had Multiple Wives.” Well, you may ask, if they once were polygynists, yet no longer are in that lifestyle, what’s the problem? Well, I honestly can’t cite any Scripture to back up any of my reasons. There are none. However, I will make suppositions regarding his intent:
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1. Men who became Christians while in a polygynist marriage and where made a new creation in Christ, would have had to choose one of their wives to continue to marry (sexual intimate) and then continue only to meet the provisions for the other(s) exclusively. And as long as she was content to stay and not depart, he did not cast her out (I can argue that he could have biblically, but not in this posting here, because even if my argument is valid, it still wouldn’t be relevant regarding my conclusions). In this arrangement, however, it could cause suspicion of what may be transpiring in the home behind closed doors and foster a “bad report from without.”
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2. If a man had put away his other wives, they could create false narratives against him, fostering a “bad report.”
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3. If an unsaved man divorced his one wife before becoming a Christian, that wife, for whatever reason, could declare a lot of false things about him as well, which would create a “bad report,” even though it may be false.
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4. If he became a Christian and was never married previously and then marries and has put that wife away for a biblical reason, the same thing could be the result, even though he would be innocent. Either way, him having only his own one wife, period, with no past marital history would squelch any previous wife’s slander or false accusations from ever happening and spare the church from accusations of hypocrisy and ridicule. It is all about the leadership being pure, respected, and above reproach for the sake of the kingdom of God and exemplification.