AP

I am a post war, ‘baby boomer’, I have never known any other state than freedom, including the freedom to speak my mind.

Since 1968 I have been a Christian preacher and have never known anything than the freedom to preach the content of God’s revelation, the Bible.

Today such assumed freedom is under threat, if I state my convictions I may be ostracised, labelled a ‘Nazi loving, racist homophobic, misogynist’, or a ‘knuckle dragging, cave dweller’, or referred to the Australian Human Rights Commission or the State’s Anti-Discrimination Board.

Here are ten truths I preach, write about and speak which may put me under such threat:

1. Jesus Christ is uniquely God and is the only true revelation of God and the only way to have relationship with God and eternal life.
2. The Christian faith alone is true, it is unique in that of all the world’s religions it alone tells us what God has DONE to bring us into relationship with him, rather than what we must DO to win relationship with him (the emphasis of all other religions).
3. The world we live in is part of God’s wonderful creation, but it is marred by human sin. The essence of our sin is self-promoting, self-indulgent pride. God hates pride and all human sin springs from it.
4. The Christian who is too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use does not exist. The opposite is true.
5. The 10 Commandments are God’s good direction to his redeemed old covenant people. The new covenant people of God are to live in the power of the Spirit, as though they were crucified with Christ and according to the ethical exhortations of the New Testament.
6. Human life begins at conception.
7. Gender is a biological reality bestowed by the Creator, and not a social construct.
8. Marriage is God’s provision and is a covenant, life long relationship between a man and a woman.
9. Divorce is a tragic, destructive reality. Remarriage is a possibility if divorce occurred because of unfaithfulness or desertion.
10. Tolerance, based on the philosophy of the circle, that all reality is one, is not good. This philosophy—called Oneism—takes away all distinctives between Creator and created; human and animal life; male and female; monogamy and polygamy; one religion and another; one culture and another; one political system and another, is not based on careful reason and is to be rejected.

Addendum. I add 4 more because I don’t have the brevity of a God-inspired author like Moses:

1. Physical death is not the end of life.
2. Beyond death there is a reality called heaven (to be with God) and a realty called hell (to be cut off from God). A wide, easy, popular road leads to hell and a narrow, hard less popular road leads to heaven.
3. Two Old Testament laws, not directly applied in the New Testament, yet both are sensible and a good guide for Christian people. Sabbath keeping, one day of rest in seven is a good guide to physical rest. The tithe, setting aside one tenth of income for the support of God’s work, a good guide for giving.
4. Christian citizens have as much right and responsibility to promote the Christian worldview in society as those of other faiths and no faiths have the right to promote theirs.