Bethany Christian Services No Longer Christian

Bethany “Christian” Services is no longer worthy of the “Christian” moniker. Her leaders have capitulated. Jamie Dean, with World Magazine, reports that “after years of Bethany affirming the Bible’s teaching on marriage as a union between a man and a woman, the 77-year-old organization is abandoning its position on the foundational, Scriptural issue.” The adoption agency began this descent several years ago: “Bethany’s trajectory toward same-sex placements began years ago, as a handful of states and cities began requiring some agencies involved in foster care and adoption to allow same-sex couples to apply” (Dean). Now, the fall from grace is complete: Bethany recently announced that it will allow same-sex couples to foster and adopt in all of its locations.

Al Mohler describes Bethany’s decision to “place children in same-sex households and other families identified as LGBTQ” as a “watershed pivot.”

[Bethany’s decision is] a pivot away from orthodox biblical Christianity and towards the aims of the sexual revolution and its new morality…Make no mistake: This is exactly the pivot that is increasingly demanded by the moral revolutionaries. They will not equivocate or relent until every operational commitment to an orthodox Christian understanding of marriage and sexuality is eradicated from the public square. This means that every institution, school, ministry, denomination, and individual who would participate in the marketplace, must capitulate their beliefs. (Mohler)

Of course, there is an obvious reason the LGBTQ apostles are honing in on adoption agencies, seeking to force them to repent of the Christian position on the family. Same-sex couples cannot make babies. Thus, they must redefine what the term “parents” means. They must attack the Christian practice of adoption in order to make up for the shortcomings of their sin.

Christians have been deeply involved in adoption and child care throughout church history. Christians and churches have established the great majority of historic orphanages and foundling homes and produced many of the child care agencies serving today. Love of Christ and obedience to his commands has led Christians throughout the centuries to care for the most vulnerable in society. Christians believe in helping children, and in the case of adoption, to place children in homes with a mother and a father to receive the love and nurture that comes from that God-designed familial environment. (Mohler)

Mohler describes this “attempt to redefine what it means to be a parent, a mother, a father, and a family [as] an attempt to redefine civilization.” It is nothing less than that. The alphabet soup evangelists must redefine the family—the very building block of civilization—in order to participate in the blessing of childrearing. They are envious of the God-designed family unit. They want what adherence to God’s design offers, but they hate God, and so they would rather steal that blessing than repent and receive it on God’s terms.

As with all other humanistic systems of thought, the LGBTQ movement will fail. God is not inclined to bless disobedience to his law and he will surely judge a people that defy his creational design. That judgment might be delayed—he waited 400 years in the case of the Amorites (Genesis 15:13-16)—but it will come. The axiomatic flaw of the LGBTQ movement is that it is sterile. It is a covenant with death, not life. It will not prosper. Attempting to adopt children and then raise them within a habitation of sexual perversion is certainly the shrewdest strategy available, but even that will be thwarted. Though the LGBTQ movement may appear to flourish for a time, “in just a little while [it] will be no more” (Psalm 37:10). Though you look carefully for it, it will not be there. Here’s the gospel truth: things don’t end well for the wicked—in this life or the hereafter. “It will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God” (Ecclesiastes 8:13). The kingdom of Christ has come and it is spreading. It is a slow and often subtle spread (cf. Isaiah 42:1-4; Matthew 13:31-33)—but it is also an inevitable and comprehensive spread.

Instead of trusting in Christ’s invincible kingdom, Bethany decided to bet on the latest vain plot to burst free from God’s Word. Instead of patiently counting on the inescapable victory of the Son, Bethany decided to put her hopes in those who rage against the Lord and his Anointed. The threats and comminations of the sexual revolutionaries have caused the agency to seek shelter in PC progressivism. Instead of trusting in Christ and openly adhering to God’s Law-Word regarding marriage as between a man and a woman, the leaders of Bethany “Christian” Services have submitted to the spirit of the age. They “have made a covenant with death…made lies [their] refuge, and in falsehood [they] have taken shelter” (Isaiah 28:15). Bowing to sin in order to be free from the ire of the LGBTQ advocates is like leaning on a broken reed. Such a “broken reed of a staff…will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it” (Isaiah 36:6). The reed will inevitably break and you will be worse off than before, bloodied and injured. The LGBTQ mission will fail in history. And those who have succumbed to its machinations will find that they leaned on a splintered staff, instead of standing on God’s inviolable Word. May all agencies, organizations, and political leaders take heed. Be warned. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling, lest you find yourself with a broken reed piercing your side. Be wise, lest you and those you trust perish under the slow and gradual advancement of Christ’s kingdom. Bethany picked the wrong kingdom. May she speedily repent.