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Prayer request Upcoming conversation with my pastor about polygamy

B

Bartato

Seasoned Member
Real Person*
Male
I'm scheduled to have another talk with my pastor regarding polygamy in a few days. I request that you pray for the following.

1. Please pray that I will speak clearly and accurately from Scripture, and do so in a way that is bold, and firm, yet also gentle, kind, and respectful.

It is easy for things to get heated and I want to avoid that.

2. Please pray that the Lord will graciously open my pastor's eyes, ears, heart, and mind to humbly receive and submit to what the Bible teaches regarding this issue, and that he would no longer be blinded.

Please also pray that my pastor would start moving towards Biblical patriarchy and away from the compromised position of Complementarianism.

3. Please pray that the Lord would graciously fill my brother the pastor with such holy and reverent fear of God, and faith in, and love for the Lord Jesus Christ, that the earthly fear of man (and woman) will be swept away

4. Please pray that the Lord will grant him the courage and integrity to deal truthfully with the issue.

5. Please pray that hat my wife will not have any fear or dread about this visit

We've been kicked out of church before and it isn't fun.

I have spoken with this pastor (and the entire elder board) regarding polygamy some years back. I laid out the evidence and also presented them with a variety of digital resources (Tom Shipley, Martin Madan, Bill Luck, etc). I doubt they seriously considered these materials.

They didn't get it, and basically repeated all the normal talking points.

The power of God is needed here. I know it is beyond my control. Humanly speaking, I would despair of talking with him, but I also know that God is exceedingly powerful. God does change hearts and minds. He has done it to me, and He can do it for my brother.

The thing that brought the topic up again is that the pastor is currently preaching through 1st and 2nd Samuel. Clearly there are passages in these books that relate to polygamy.

Overall, the pastor has downplayed polygamy, which is probably good, as it generally isn't the point of the passage. It's usually going on in the background.

He has however made a couple of problematic statements. At one point, he mentioned David's "sin of polygamy" being married to both Ahinoam and Abigail. He also recently suggested that David violated Deuteronomy 17:17 when taking additional wives after becoming king.

I can't let stuff like that slide. I don't want him to mislead God's people, or incur guilt for teaching error. As a brother, I am required to help keep him on track.

As many of you know, I am less enthusiastic about polygamy than most here, having had a heart change on the issue about a year ago. It is my belief that monogamy is normally preferable, but I cannot deny the obvious fact that the Bible treats polygamy as lawful marriage and not as adultery or sexual immorality.

Denying this fact causes us to fall into a multitude of other errors, and I don't want that for our church.

Thank you
 
Praying
 
Bartato said:
I'm scheduled to have another talk with my pastor regarding polygamy in a few days. I request that you pray for the following.

1. Please pray that I will speak clearly and accurately from Scripture, and do so in a way that is bold, and firm, yet also gentle, kind, and respectful.

It is easy for things to get heated and I want to avoid that.

2. Please pray that the Lord will graciously open my pastor's eyes, ears, heart, and mind to humbly receive and submit to what the Bible teaches regarding this issue, and that he would no longer be blinded.

Please also pray that my pastor would start moving towards Biblical patriarchy and away from the compromised position of Complementarianism.

3. Please pray that the Lord would graciously fill my brother the pastor with such holy and reverent fear of God, and faith in, and love for the Lord Jesus Christ, that the earthly fear of man (and woman) will be swept away

4. Please pray that the Lord will grant him the courage and integrity to deal truthfully with the issue.

5. Please pray that hat my wife will not have any fear or dread about this visit

We've been kicked out of church before and it isn't fun.

I have spoken with this pastor (and the entire elder board) regarding polygamy some years back. I laid out the evidence and also presented them with a variety of digital resources (Tom Shipley, Martin Madan, Bill Luck, etc). I doubt they seriously considered these materials.

They didn't get it, and basically repeated all the normal talking points.

The power of God is needed here. I know it is beyond my control. Humanly speaking, I would despair of talking with him, but I also know that God is exceedingly powerful. God does change hearts and minds. He has done it to me, and He can do it for my brother.

The thing that brought the topic up again is that the pastor is currently preaching through 1st and 2nd Samuel. Clearly there are passages in these books that relate to polygamy.

Overall, the pastor has downplayed polygamy, which is probably good, as it generally isn't the point of the passage. It's usually going on in the background.

He has however made a couple of problematic statements. At one point, he mentioned David's "sin of polygamy" being married to both Ahinoam and Abigail. He also recently suggested that David violated Deuteronomy 17:17 when taking additional wives after becoming king.

I can't let stuff like that slide. I don't want him to mislead God's people, or incur guilt for teaching error. As a brother, I am required to help keep him on track.

As many of you know, I am less enthusiastic about polygamy than most here, having had a heart change on the issue about a year ago. It is my belief that monogamy is normally preferable, but I cannot deny the obvious fact that the Bible treats polygamy as lawful marriage and not as adultery or sexual immorality.

Denying this fact causes us to fall into a multitude of other errors, and I don't want that for our church.

Thank you
Click to expand...
You are certainly in my prayers. 🙏

The core issue is the authority of Scripture. That's the battleground. It hasn't changed since that day in the Garden and it has produced all the conflicts and problems since. Take heart, brother, the day draws ever nearer when all those errors will be put to an end.
 
Bartato said:
As many of you know, I am less enthusiastic about polygamy than most here, having had a heart change on the issue about a year ago. It is my belief that monogamy is normally preferable, but I cannot deny the obvious fact that the Bible treats polygamy as lawful marriage and not as adultery or sexual immorality.
Click to expand...
And that makes you the ideal person to talk to mainstream Christians about it. You're not practicing it, nor promoting it, you're not obsessed about it, you're actually discouraging it in most circumstances, so you're obviously not just trying to make excuses for some lust you want to act on. It is very hard to argue that you are doing anything other than genuinely considering this detail of theology from a pure heart. You are the ideal witness God has placed in this situation. That doesn't mean it will be easy, nor that you will succeed, but it means that you are in the exact place where God wants you to be, and He has prepared you perfectly for this task. You can relax and know that with His help you're going to do a decent job of it, and the result is entirely in His hands.

Seriously @Bartato, do not think of yourself as out of place here, stop apologising for your perspective. The members of this forum include both the wise and the unwise. The wise are mostly monogamous (wise enough to avoid jumping into polygamy foolishly), with a few wise and successful polygamists for whom it was truly the right thing to do. While the unwise are those who share with excitement that they've just got another wife and a year later it's all collapsed because they were idiots who should never have even gone there. And some of the wisest were once unwise and have learnt wisdom through their own mistakes. Not naming any names - I'm just stating what @Bartato already knows simply to reassure him that he isn't the only one who has noticed it.

It is the WISE men who are the solid core of this ministry - and that most certainly includes you @Bartato. Your caution about polygamy is a mark of wisdom.
 
FollowingHim said:
And that makes you the ideal person to talk to mainstream Christians about it. You're not practicing it, nor promoting it, you're not obsessed about it, you're actually discouraging it in most circumstances, so you're obviously not just trying to make excuses for some lust you want to act on. It is very hard to argue that you are doing anything other than genuinely considering this detail of theology from a pure heart. You are the ideal witness God has placed in this situation. That doesn't mean it will be easy, nor that you will succeed, but it means that you are in the exact place where God wants you to be, and He has prepared you perfectly for this task. You can relax and know that with His help you're going to do a decent job of it, and the result is entirely in His hands.

Seriously @Bartato, do not think of yourself as out of place here, stop apologising for your perspective. The members of this forum include both the wise and the unwise. The wise are mostly monogamous (wise enough to avoid jumping into polygamy foolishly), with a few wise and successful polygamists for whom it was truly the right thing to do. While the unwise are those who share with excitement that they've just got another wife and a year later it's all collapsed because they were idiots who should never have even gone there. And some of the wisest were once unwise and have learnt wisdom through their own mistakes. Not naming any names - I'm just stating what @Bartato already knows simply to reassure him that he isn't the only one who has noticed it.

It is the WISE men who are the solid core of this ministry - and that most certainly includes you @Bartato. Your caution about polygamy is a mark of wisdom.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for the encouraging words. I greatly appreciate your response.
 
frederick said:
You are certainly in my prayers. 🙏

The core issue is the authority of Scripture. That's the battleground. It hasn't changed since that day in the Garden and it has produced all the conflicts and problems since. Take heart, brother, the day draws ever nearer when all those errors will be put to an end.
Click to expand...
That really is the issue.
 
Bartato said:
He has however made a couple of problematic statements. At one point, he mentioned David's "sin of polygamy" being married to both Ahinoam and Abigail. He also recently suggested that David violated Deuteronomy 17:17 when taking additional wives after becoming king.
Click to expand...
He should quit quoting from the book of popular opinions.

I totally agree with followinghim. You are in an ideal place to confront the heresy.

Praying for you and the others involved.
 
Hey let me know if you would like to do a MS Teams chat, where I can play devil's advocate, and iron out your responses beforehand.
 
Joleneakamama said:
He should quit quoting from the book of popular opinions.

I totally agree with followinghim. You are in an ideal place to confront the heresy.

Praying for you and the others involved.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your prayers. Basically, I believe his faithfulness to Christ (as seen by submission to Scripture) will be tested. For everyone's sake, I hope he passes.
 
I really don't think you can rehearse for this sort of thing, because the conversation will always go in a different direction in reality. You need to be fully present in the moment, not remembering responses you rehearsed.
 
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